Clipped Wings
by charis2770
Summary: Something has clipped Hawkeye's wings. He's been avoiding SHIELD hq like the plague. Natasha thinks she knows why, and she's had enough. I don't own these characters, Avengers, or the Marvel universe . Warning for explicit content, non-consensual stuff and BDSM themes. Subsequent chapters to further explore this relationship. All will contain smut. Some will be grim.
1. Chapter 1

It takes her about two weeks to notice that he hardly ever leaves Stark Tower. She curses herself mentally for being this unobservant, because she's historically been more tuned in to him than this, but she cuts herself a little slack because there has just been so much absolute shit to deal with, since the golden god took his wayward brother home to face the music. Half of downtown Manhattan looks like toy blocks flung around by a toddler pitching a fit. A really BIG toddler. The green rage monster didn't do this much damage when he destroyed….what was it he'd said? Alaska? Anyway, she notices, and she thinks she knows why.

Ever a fixture at SHIELD headquarters, watching silent and brooding from rafters or scaffolding or whatever damn thing he could climb, he was just always there. The man lived and breathed SHIELD. And he hasn't set foot across its threshold since the Chitauri invasion was thwarted. He had been instrumental in that herculean group effort, an event so huge and so catastrophic it had made a team player out of Tony Stark, the ultimate in solo acts. Without his eyes, she'd never have been able to hijack that Chitauri air bike and use it to hitch a lift to the top of the tower, where she and Selvig had shut down the portal. He has to know this. And yet he stays away, keeps to himself, yes all right, he fucking hides. She gets it. When he thinks about SHIELD, he thinks about the fellow agents he killed. He thinks of his betrayal of those he had sworn oaths to. He thinks about how he tried to kill her. He thinks about those things and he owns them, in his heart, and is unable to transfer the blame for any of them.

He's pissing her off.

She thinks about it long and hard, trying to decide how to handle him. She knows her feelings aren't entirely objective, but that hardly matters. No one else has seemed to notice, and since she has, it falls to her. Like the marines, she'll leave no man behind. And he has been, back there where his mind wasn't his own and his soul was raped by the trickster Loki. He's still back there, and damned if she'll move another step forward without him. She goes quietly to Tony and requests some modifications to the dojo in the basement. He raises his eyebrows but something in her voice prevents him from making any smartass comments, for which she is grateful. Not because they would embarrass her, but because she'd sort of hate to have to kill him. Sort of.

She raps a fist briskly on the door to his suite in the Tower. There's a longish pause and then she hears his voice.

"Who is it?"

"It's me, Barton. Open the door."

"Kinda busy here, can you come back later?"

Asshole. She picks the lock in about 5 seconds flat and slips in the door. His back is to her on a cream colored sofa. He's watching television and there's a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels on the table beside his elbow.

"Yeah, you look busy," she says sarcastically. He jerks a little but doesn't turn to face her. This breaks her heart a little, that he won't even look at her.

"What do you want?" he asks disinterestedly. She walks around the end of the couch and kicks his feet of the coffee table. He flinches in surprise. "What the fuck?"

"Get up and put on your leather, Barton. You're getting soft, and we're gonna spar. Fury's orders."

"Maybe later. Not in the mood," he says, playing it casual.

"Did I ask, asshat?" she says conversationally, and his eyes flash for just a second. This encourages her. He's still in there. Somewhere. So she sneers, and she mocks, and she pushes, until with a snarl he leaps up from the sofa, shouldering her aside roughly, and storms to his bedroom to change. She blinks back the hurt while he's not there to see her. This is not about her. She can't show him any weakness. She can't hesitate. Can certainly not flinch. She just hopes one day he'll be able to forgive her.

They ride the elevator in silence. He's adjusting the straps on his wrist guards. He won't be fighting her with the bow, but he can't don his uniform without donning all the bits and accessories that make him the Hawk. She looks at him out of the corner of her eye, making sure he doesn't notice. He always takes the sleeves off, she thinks as her gaze sweeps over the flexing of his arms while he settles. He's not a lot taller than she is, certainly a great deal smaller than Thor, and Rogers. He's even shorter than Tony (sans the suit) and Bruce (sans the rage). She wonders if that bothers him. She thinks he's just right. But she's damned if she'll tell him so. There's rage and despair coming off him in waves, so thick its like a miasma of hopelessness. She's choking on it. But worse than that, worse than the taste of his bitterness on her tongue, is that he's killing himself with it, by inches. _Fuck_ if she's going to let him. Just fuck that.

The dojo on one of the lower levels of Stark Tower is her favorite place. She comes here often, to keep her body in fighting trim. She is nothing if not a weapon, slim, swift, and deadly as a blade. She loves the moves, the ballet of martial arts. But to her very great surprise, Stark has made these rooms a place of refuge, and of peace. There's harmony. Balance. He's such an utterly chaotic person that she can't imagine how he managed this place. But when she thinks about it, maybe Tony's a lot more balanced than he lets anyone see. Maybe chaos *is* his balance. He's certainly not far from home, or a step out of time, or at war with his inner beast, like Thor or Rogers or Banner. There's no red in *his* file. And he's certainly not lost. Not like the man who steps off the elevator beside her. She takes a deep breath, inhaling the scents of bamboo and teak and incense. Really she's inhaling the tranquility, because things are about to get as far from tranquil as they can get.

She means to break him.

Before they're even all the way into the room, she executes a roundhouse and kicks him in the middle of his back, shoving him forward into the room and onto his hands and knees. She knows him too well. If she doesn't piss him off right now, he won't fight her. Not really. He'll only go through the motions of it. He utters a startled sound of protest and rolls to his feet, glaring at her.

"The fuck was that, Romanoff?" he demands angrily. She tilts her head to the side and quirks a finger at him.

"You're soft, Barton," she says coldly. She kicks him again, in the stomach, and he stumbles back a few paces, still glaring. "Soft," she repeats icily, and her foot slams into his thigh. "Slipping," she snarls, and kicks away the arm her brings up to block her. "Losing your edge." She leg sweeps him and he lands hard on his back, his breath exploding out in a whoosh. He does a quick kip-up and now he's not just glaring, he's well and truly pissed. Good.

He comes at her now, and they are a whirlwind of fists and feet, the peace of the dojo now shattered by the thwack of flesh on flesh, by the whoosh of breath, grunts of pain and satisfaction. She can feel it though, he's still holding back. He wasn't on the helicarrier. Of course, he was trying to kill her at the time, but he wasn't holding back! This is bullshit. She punches him in the nose, hears it crunch. It doesn't bleed a lot, so she's probably only fractured it a little. He snarls and wipes away the small trickle with the back of his hand, then shakes his head to clear it. She _laughs_ at him.

Well. That does it. He comes at her now, full speed. And he is fast. His reflexes are as good as hers. His sense of timing and physical awareness are as good too. He punches her in the stomach and she gasps, and the impact sings through her body. Her vision narrows until there is nothing but this man, this adversary, this target. That's what he is now, what he has to be if she's got any hope of saving him. They brutalize each other.

She doesn't know it, but Tony watches on surveillance, because he's worried, and what she asked for worried him more. He's holding his breath as he watches, because they are fucking beautiful. They have no powered suits, no special serums, no immortal powers. They are their only weapons, and their dance is breathtaking and terrible. It's also intimate, what's happening between them on the mats, and he feels like a voyeur. He's worried, but he has to trust she knows what she's doing. It's hard to drag himself away, because watching them is hypnotic, but he shakes himself. Turns off the monitor. Gets up and goes looking for Pepper. Finds that for some reason, he has to have her. Now.

Natasha keeps pushing, driving him further and further into rage, fighting dirty and *hurting* him, because she needs him to lose control. When he does, it's as lovely as it is frightening. In his stormy grey eyes she sees nothing sane. This is the point where she does what is perhaps the most reckless thing she has ever done, and the hardest, because it goes totally against her nature. She has whipped him up into a frenzy, fueled his rage until he's consumed with it. And she drops her guard. Subtly, so it won't be obvious, because no matter how angry he is, he isn't stupid. And oh, it's hard. The Black Widow does not throw fights, not like this. She's acted the part of helpless victim plenty of times. Men are always going to fall for it. But that was knowing in the end she'd show them her real face and they'd lose. She lets him beat her.

There's a tiny stumble, and he flips her. She goes down hard, flat on her back, and he follows her down, and his hands are around her throat. Squeezing. There is no one home. She shoves her fear down ruthlessly, lets him cut off her air. Waits til the room starts to go grey around the edges. Then she says his name. Hoarsely, forcing the word out of her burning lungs, but there is no fear in her voice, no pleading. She is calm. Just his name.

Clint.

Above her, he freezes, and his fingers loosen. Now that she can breathe, just a little, she lets herself be aware of his body pressed against her. He's hard, but she doesn't think he knows it. Inside her, something trembles, but she doesn't let him see it. If things go the way she hopes, there may be time for that later. Now she just looks at him, unblinking, and waits. He is still wild, still lost and crazed, but he loosens his fingers and lets go of her throat. He hurls himself backwards, away from her, and she throttles the ache of loss her body feels without him molded to her.

"God. Tasha….I'm…." Her turns from her, and tries to flee for the elevator. Now is when she hopes Tony has delivered what he promised. She presses a button on the specially designed gauntlet he gave her this morning, muttering good luck. The door to the dojo slams shut in Barton's face. He stumbles to a halt and looks back at her over his shoulder. His eyes are bleak. "What did you do? Open the door," he says hoarsely.

"No," she says calmly.

"Open the goddamn door, Natasha," he yells in desperation. "Don't you see? I nearly killed you!"

"Idiot," she says calmly. Shows him nothing. "Coward."

He comes for her again, but it isn't fiercely beautiful this time. He's panicked. Cornered. She has no trouble fighting him off. This is the right time, she thinks, because he's owned by his fear and his self-loathing now. She flips him easily, and steps away from him. When he staggers to his feet, she presses another button. From the ceiling, cables shoot down, whip around his forearms like striking snakes. He's startled, momentarily confused. The cables pull tight, up and out, forcing his arms above his head, lifting him up on his toes. She cocks her head to the side and makes a small adjustment, giving him about an inch more slack, so he's on the balls of his feet instead. She knows his feet are just as dangerous, so another button whips similar cables out from the walls to bind his ankles. He struggles for a few minutes, raging and cursing at her to let him go. She stands impassively, just out of reach of a head-butt (the only maneuver open to him now) and watches. At last he's still, breath heaving in his chest, head down, refusing to look at her.

"Clint," she says softly. He shakes his head a little in negation and stares stubbornly at the floor. Her hand flashes out, grasps him by the hair on top of his head, and yanks it up. She steps up in his face now, nose to nose with him and just inhaling the scent of his sweat, and his fear and despair. There's something else too, but she's not ready to go there yet, not with those other things in the way of it.

"Let me go," he whispers bleakly.

"You wish, asshole," she snarls.

He opens his mouth to protest and she slaps him, hard. His eyes widen In shock.

"You will look at me when I speak to you," she says coldly. "And you will speak when I give you permission. Is that clear?"

"Tasha…"

"I said IS THAT CLEAR?" she shrieks into his face, and slaps him again, twice. She thought about using blades to cow him, but decided against it, as she has to hurt him to break him, and he knows she won't kill him. Never use a threat you won't fulfill. But he knows she'll beat him bloody, and she intends to. Only…probably not in the way he expects.

"Yes," he finally answers through gritted teeth. He knows her too well to argue with her. That's good. Saves time.

She uses scissors instead of a blade, because it confuses him, and she wants him off balance. She goes to work cutting his leather off him and he shouts in protest. She slaps him in the back of the head and sees he's bitten his tongue. Fine. Should have kept his bitch mouth shut anyway. She's falling into the role now. He's her dog. Her meat. And he's been a very. Bad. Boy. He subsides, glaring at her while she finishes slicing his uniform to ribbons. She cuts it up a lot more than she needs to get him naked, but she wants his armor in tatters at his feet. When it is, she looks him slowly up and down. She cannot help it that she likes what she sees. His body is sturdy and compact. His considerable muscles vibrate with tension and rage. Actually, he's fucking gorgeous like this. She glances at his groin and raises an eyebrow. Well. Not all of him is entirely pissed off about this. She puts out the tip of her tongue, touches it to her lip. He sees her do it, sees where she's looking, and he flushes.

"My my, Barton," she purrs silkily. "What _have _ you been hiding?" She's not exaggerating. She's a little taken aback, actually. She expected him to be….proportional.

"Please, stop this Natasha," he whispers. Her head snaps up and her eyes go hard.

"Did. I. Give. You. Permission. To. Speak. Boy?" she bites the words off and hurls them at him. His head goes back in surprise at her vehemence. She punches him in the gut, a sharp jab that forces the air from his lungs but doesn't do any damage. She turns her back on him and goes to a cabinet, one he probably thinks holds staves and nunchaku and sai, rattan blades for sparring, pads….things you'd expect to find in a dojo. But this cabinet is one she's asked Tony to stock specifically for her. For this. She flings it open and snags a heavy flogger. It's 3 feet long, the falls of heavy boar hide, but tanned soft and velvety. It's weighty in her hand when she swings it experimentally. She looks back over her shoulder to see him staring at her, wide-eyed. She strolls back to him, slowly, leading with her hips, stalking him. She sees his pupils dilate. He's confused, and he's pissed, but he's intrigued too. Well, if at least part of him wants this, it will make it easier in the end.

"Let me go, Tash. This isn't funny anymore. I don't want to play. You're pissing me off. Untie me. Now," he yells at the end. He doesn't know it yet, but he's panicked. And she thinks it's because part of him does want this. Wants it _badly_ and doesn't want her to see it. She frowns, turns her back on him again. From the cabinet she takes a ball gag.

"If you can't obey a simple command, I'll just shut your bitch mouth myself, dog," she says. She presses her body against his and he's unable to muffle the sound in his chest when he feels her leather against his bare skin. But he glares, and he clenches his jaw. She smiles sweetly and pinches his nose, cutting off his air. He holds his breath for a pretty long time, she's got to give him that. But eventually he gasps, and she thrusts the red rubber between his teeth. It's not very big. It doesn't stretch his mouth obscenely, just presses against his teeth and tongue. He tries to spit it out, but he's so shocked by what she's doing that her reflexes are way better, and it's buckled securely behind his head before he can blink. He's making muffled sounds of rage and protest now behind the gag, but she likes him like this. She pats him on the cheek and walks behind him. Oh, he doesn't like it that he can't see what she's doing. Doesn't like it one bit. She can see it in the stiffness of his body language.

She doesn't make him wonder long. The heavy flogger whirls in the air and smacks with a thud against his tense shoulders. He jerks, and she hits him again. She knows what it feels like. It isn't sharp pain, more like a steady and thorough beating with fists. It pounds his back, his ass and thighs like a hammer. His skin reddens and he's shuddering with every blow. It's no worse than a vigorous sparring match. This won't break him. She's only softening him up. When she's nice and warm and loose, she goes back to the cabinet and takes out another whip. A different kind of flogger this time, with thin braided falls. It's lighter, but its bite is meaner. The ends of the falls are knotted. Each lash is only about as big around as a pencil. It's braided of red and black leather. She runs the falls through her fingers as she approaches him, feels the knotted ends, rolls them between her fingertips. He's breathing hard, but he's still glaring. He makes a sound of negation through the gag and she laughs.

"Did you say something?" she asks mischievously. "I didn't think so."

The beating this time is much crueler. Welts rise up on his skin like wasp stings. He's shuddering, and shouting angrily behind the gag. She puts her back into it, and the vicious little knots break his skin. She has to pause for a second and watch the blood bead up, trickle down his ridged and trembling muscles. Well shit. She's suddenly aware that she's _dripping_ inside her tight leather pants. She leans close to him, feels the heat coming off his abused skin in waves. She licks up his spine, one long slide of her tongue, tasting salt and the bright metallic tang of blood. He freezes when she does this, motionless save for the fine tremble in his muscles. Then comes a sound from his throat. She thinks it's a whimper. She steps back in front of him, and his eyes are wild and silver-blue, his pupils dilated and glassy. He's staring at her like he's been poleaxed. She glances down to be sure and his cock stands out from his body like a ramrod. She smiles slowly, wickedly at him, and his eyes close. He swallows hard and then *looks* at her again. She readies her stance, and the whip curls back. She paints the front of his body with welts, taking care to avoid his groin. She wants to break him. Not, you know, BREAK him. She's panting now with effort and…something else she doesn't stop to think about too much. She takes a drop of his blood on her finger and puts it to her lips. He's quicksilver and sex and candy on her tongue. She licks it off, and he is unable to tear his gaze away. He's shaking, and he's aroused, and he's very very confused, but it's not enough. She turns her back on him again and approaches the cabinet. Steeling herself for what she's going to do now.

The whip this time is one sinuous tail, 18 plait kangaroo hide from Australia, where the best whips in the world are made. The handle is loaded with lead shot. It hisses and curls around her legs when she lets it unroll to the ground. It is six feet of pure mean, and it feels almost alive. He shakes his head in negation when she stalks back towards him. She stares him steadily in the eyes.

"I'm going to break you now," she says softly. "I'm going to rip you to shreds until you shatter for me. Clint. I'm going to hurt you. A lot. Don't fight me (she knows he will) or it will be worse."

She ignores the sounds of anger and pleading from the gag and takes up her position behind him again. It isn't sexy this time. It's brutal. The whip cuts him, leaves bloody ribbons decorating his back and ass. She's deadly accurate. Every lash makes him flinch, draws blood. He's moaning now. She blocks out the sound and beats him harder. His body is arched forward as though to escape, and he thrashes helplessly in his bonds. They're titanium. He's not getting loose. The welts are already purple at the edges with bruising. Every stroke now crosses a previous mark. There is blood in splatters on the floor at his feet. She hears him now, roaring in pain behind the offending gag, the muscles and tendons in his neck standing out in agony. He's covered with sweat. Then she hears what she's waited for, what she's been pushing him towards. A sob. His body sags, hanging in the cables, not trying to hold himself up on his feet anymore, and his shoulders shake with sobs. She drops the whip to the floor and goes to face him. Tears course down his face. His mouth trembles around the gag. He's broken, lost and crying like a lost child. She removes the gag tenderly from his mouth and lets it, too fall to the floor. She touches his face tenderly and he leans his cheek into her hand, gasping with his sobs, his chest hitching.

"Shh," she soothes, lifting his chin with her fingertips so he has no choice but to meet her gaze. He's ashamed, embarrassed. He tries not to do it, not to let her see him like this, but she won't let him hide now. "Clinton, look at me," she whispers. He does. "You're helpless, Hawkeye. You belong to me now. You can't escape. I own you." She stares him steady in the eye when she says it.

"….yes…." he chokes.

"Who do you belong to, Barton?"

"I….you," he says hoarsely, defeated. He is hurting, he is broken and beaten, but she notices that he is also still hard as iron.

"What will you do for me, Clinton," she purrs in his ear, flicking it with the tip of her tongue. He gasps.

"An…anything."

"Why?"

"Buh…because you own me," he says. There is the self-loathing again. Broken yes, but he's still got a ways to go til he's healed.

"That's right," she hisses. "You'll do anything I ask, because there is no escape. I beat you. I broke you. And you're mine. I can do anything I want with you now. Anything at all." She pulls back, takes his chin in her hand, fingernails digging in, and makes him look. "Can you stop me, dog?"

"No," he breathes.

"Why?' she asks. He closes his eyes and tears roll down. She licks one away and he gasps. "Why can't you stop me, Clint?"

"Because you own me," he says. His eyes open and they shine, silvered with tears. "Tasha…" he breathes. "You have always….owned me…"

Oh God. Her heart trembles at this. She longs to let him down, to clasp him to her and soothe away the hurt. But he's not done yet. He's close. But not finished.

"I own you. You belong to me and that means you're mine to do with as I please. If it pleases me to flay you alive, you can't stop me now. If it pleases me to leave you here to starve, you can't stop that either. You're helpless, and you're beaten."

"Yes….Mistress…" he breathes. Closer now. He owns her mastery of him now, takes it into his heart and lets it live there. And, she reflects with some amusement, part of him likes it very much. But then, he loved Loki while he was possessed by him too. He had no more choice then than he does now. Does he see that yet? She doesn't think so. So with trepidation in her heart, she moves into the final step. The one there is no going back from. The one she does not know if he can ever forgive.

She's going to rape him now. And then she's going to make him like it.

She steps back from him and slowly unzips her leather uniform. She's naked under it today, just for this purpose. His pupils dilate even more, and his breath falters.

"Tasha…." He breathes her name out on a sigh.

She quirks and eyebrow at him.

"What did you call me?"

"Mistress," he says tritely. She turns her back abruptly, and walks to the cabinet one more time. She takes out a harness, steps into it. A small but very realistic cock juts forward from her crotch now. When she turns back towards him with a small bottle of lube in her fist, his eyes widen in panic. He starts shaking his head as she struts towards him slowly.

"Mistress…please…don't do this," he whispers. There is real fear in his eyes.

"It's happening, Barton. It doesn't matter what you want. What you say. You're mine, you're helpless, and I'm fucking you."

She pushes some buttons on the gauntlet and lowers him to his knees. Cables hiss out of the floor to encircle his waist. He's pinned like that, kneeling before her, head down, arms raised above him, knees spread wide. He's shaking. She kneels behind him and pushes him forward so that his ass sticks out behind him. She licks him again, tastes his blood, feels his body's helpless trembling. She drizzles lube on her fingers and rubs them together, feeling it slide like satin. He's hot between his ass cheeks, sweating. She feels for his asshole and slides one finger into him slowly. His shoulders shake with sobs of fear. He's so frightened of this. He heart aches. She sees that he's not aroused anymore. Well, that will come. She twists her finger inside him, coating his hole with slick, and feel s for his prostate. She finds it, a small rough bump, and her fingertip strokes and presses. He sucks in a huge breath of surprise and she peers around to see that he's rousing to her again, though he's still shaking his head in fear. Carefully, she slides another finger in, and he whimpers as she stretches him. He's fully hard now as she manipulates his prostate gland. He scissors her fingers, pulling his sphincter muscle open and he whines.

"Please!"

"Please what, Clinton," she purrs in his ear, twisting her fingers viciously.

"Pl…_ah_…please…_hnn_….Mistress."

"You don't know if you're begging me to fuck you or begging me to stop, do you?"

"N…_oh_….no," he whimpers, shivering. He watches his asshole stretched around her fingers and she tries to be sorry, but it's fucking hot. She pulls her fingers out and positions the head of the cock at his entrance.

"Beg me to fuck you, Clint."

"I can't!" he cries desperately. She nudges the head forward just a fraction and he moans. She reaches around in front of him and her slippery hand grasps his straining cock. The groan she tears from his body is agonized and inhuman.

"You. Belong. To. Me." She snarls. "I can beat you again if you'd like that better, boy. I can wipe this lube off and fuck you dry while you scream for me. I can make you come so hard you see stars. I can do all of that, and you can't stop me. Can you?"

Silence.

"CAN YOU?" she snarls, and shoves in, just an inch.

"_Ahh_….no!" he cries.

"Then beg me."

"Please…" he whispers, and she has to lean in to hear him. "Please….fuck me…." His head drops to his chest, defeated. Slowly, carefully, she eases her way inside him while he trembles. He's making incoherent sounds in his chest. She angles herself so that the head of the cock will slide over his prostate with each thrust, and continues to invade him slowly, inch by inch, until her hips press up against his burning, welted ass. Then she reaches back around and closes her fist on his cock, pressing her thumb on the head. It jumps in her hand. She eases back out of him a little bit and then presses back, still carefully. He's crying again now, but still in her slick fingers he's raging hard and quivering with need. She fucks into him a little harder now, and he gasps as her cock slides back and forth across the little bundle of nerves up his ass that makes him want to come so bad he can hardly stand it.

"Move with me, Clint. Can you?" she says quietly.

"Wh…_oh_…what?" he asks in bewilderment.

"Fuck my hand, Barton. Make yourself come for me."

Hesitantly, he moves his hips a little, and hisses through his teeth at the twin sensations of his cock sliding through her fist and her cock sliding out of his ass. He hesitates at the end of that stroke, as he realizes that to keep up the rhythm on his own starving dick, he's going to have to fuck himself onto hers. She waits, patiently. There's a subtle relaxing in his body as he decides, as he surrenders to it, and then he's doing it. Fucking her hand and growling in his chest, ramming himself back onto her and shouting in pain and need.

"Barton," she whispers in his ear, though it's hard to speak calmly because the harness presses against her clit every time he backs into her hips.

"Hnnh?" he grunts, slowing a little, obedient, listening.

"What's happening?" she asks. He pauses for a moment in confusion, then his voice comes harsh with need and some pain.

"You're fucking me. You…you're making me…._nnn_….help you."

"Did you choose it?"

"_Unh_...no."

"Did you want it?"

"NO!"

"Do you love it?" She pinches a bleeding welt hard when she feels him draw breath to answer. He whimpers. "Be honest."

"_Mn_….goddamn you…YES," he shouts.

"Why?" she whispers, tears in her eyes that she won't let him see.

"BECAUSE YOU MADE ME," he bellows, and slams his hips back against her, and howls when his release erupts from his cock, boiling over her fingers. Hands shaking, she presses one last button on the gauntlet and the cables release him. She pulls out of him and he collapses forward to the mat, shuddering helplessly. She sheds the harness and hurls it away across the room, crawling to him, her heart clutching in her chest. She touches his shoulder.

"Clint?" she whispers. He doesn't answer, his face buried in his arms, curled in on himself. "Are you all right?" There is silence. This is to be her price then, for saving him. And she hopes, she prays she has. She has lost him. If he'll be all right, be himself again, it was worth it. Her heart fractures like safety glass, tiny cracks crazing its shell, and she reaches a shaking hand towards him. He doesn't move, doesn't acknowledge her presence. "I'm sorry," she whispers. "I didn't know what else to do. I…I'll leave you alone." She gathers her knees under her to rise and leave him, turning away with pain shrieking through her body, her hand behind her, still reaching blindly towards him.

She stumbles to her feet, pain and loss making her clumsy for the first time in many years. She falls backwards and lands hard when something jerks on her wrist. She staring up at him, not able to breathe, when he pins her hand to the mat, reaches for the other one and pins it too, then rolls so he's half on top of her.

"Think you're getting off that easy, Romanoff?" he growls. His eyes are fierce and very blue now.

"I'm sorry," she whispers again. "I wanted to help you. I understand you have to hate me now. Hawkeye, I only wanted to make you see…"

"It wasn't my fault. Yeah. Got that part. Shut up Tasha."

She blinks. He covers her mouth with his own, and his teeth sink into her bottom lip. She gasps. He rearranges her hands so he's gripping both of them with one of his, and his other hand skims down her body and presses over her pussy. She's sopping, and when one finger slides over her clit and into her, she cries out for him, hips bucking.

"Like that, is it?" he whispers into her mouth.

"God," she gasps

"No," he snarls, rolling a little more and shoving himself into her brutally, seating himself to the hilt with one thrust. He's still hard? How is that even possible?

"You will scream only one word now, Tash," he says, and bites her lip harder. She feels her skin part and tastes her own blood. She notices it tastes exactly like his.

She screams only one word. She screams it over and over, raggedly, helplessly, delightedly. She shrieks it, and sobs it, and begs with it, and he uses her hard, and there is no gentleness, only need. The word she screams is his name.

At the end, they're both wrecked. Covered in sweat and blood and spit and come, battered and aching and so tangled together that she's not sure which of the numbed limbs in the pile are hers and which are his.

"Tash," he says weakly, raising his head to lay a shaky kiss on her cheek.

"Clint?" she answers.

"Thank you."


	2. Interlude Taking Care

**Interlude – Taking Care**

First, thanks so much for all of you who have commented, reviewed, and add this story to your favorites. Thanks specially to Wakingsnowwhite for her thoughtful input. I reliazed quickly that Clint and Tasha's story simply couldn't be told in one chapter, because there was much more to it. After all, what about all the red in her file? But I realized as I sat down for Hawkeye to return the favor that they had on obstacle to overcome before he could. They needed to deal with what Natasha had done to save him. This chapter is quite short, for me, but needed to be written to pave the way for him to save her right back. Raunchy sex, between characters I do not own. Hope you enjoy. More to come soon!

By the time the marks fade, awkwardness has set in. Which is sort of weird, because you'd think it would be the other way around. He knows she's being careful not to mention….what happened. Knows she's being careful not to do anything to remind him of it. Which, really? Makes the sex just a little bit stilted. He ponders it for a few days while they avoid the subject. Hell, she won't even get on top, and he likes the thought of watching her rising over him, her fantastic breasts heaving as she strains for her pleasure, her powerful legs holding him where she wants him, her head thrown back and the exquisite column of her throat working as she gasps. Yeah, that wouldn't suck.

Well, sometimes you have to just take the bull by the horns. With Tash that's a little scarier than with some other people. Just because she cares for him doesn't mean she won't break his nose if she's irritated. She's already done it once, and it's still a little tender.

She lets him take the lead, always. And yeah, he likes that, a lot of the time. But she's so fucking gorgeous when she's vicious, and he likes her that way too. If she keeps being careful with him, she's gonna fucking break him in a different way. She has issues of her own he longs to help her deal with, but they won't ever begin to be able to touch those if they can't get past this enormous roadblock in their way

He asks her to spar him. She hesitates. God damn it, she fucking _hesitates_ and when has she ever done that before. They're standing side by side in one of the lounges, leaning up against a wall and not paying attention to whatever movie Steve's watching because it's probably at least 50 years old. He turns his head casually towards her when he asks it, trying to make it no big deal. When he sees her hesitate, his temper flares and he pushes off the wall, whirls so he's facing her, and slaps the wall beside her head. She blinks.

"God DAMN it Natasha," he yells. "DON'T!"

Steve flinches and hunches his head down into his collar while he tries to pretend they aren't there. She eyes him coolly.

"Sure, let's spar," she shrugs, and heads for the elevator.

There are numerous places in the Tower they could choose, and when her finger would press a button for another floor, he stops her. Purposefully and firmly presses the floor for the dojo. She shrugs again.

The bloodstains are still there on the rattan mats of the floor. Tony'll probably have them replaced eventually, but for now he's glad they're there. That you cannot walk out onto the mats without noticing the flecks and splatters of his undoing. He sees her see them, and then her eyes slide away. She's cool and collected. They face off as they have hundreds of times before, and he's gratified that at least in this, she doesn't hold back. She's better than he is. He's known this for a long time, and it doesn't bother him. He's a marksman. He's better at that than she is. It doesn't bother him in the slightest that she can wipe the floor with him. He could pin her earlobe to a wall from a hundred yards away, with an arrow, and she wouldn't see it coming. Today, he intends for her to put him down even quicker than usual, because he hopes this to end with them sweaty and exhausted in a _different_ way than usual. They exchange blows, dodge and roll, feint and clash. It's a dance they both know well. He waits until they're sweating, and takes off his shirt. He's done this before. It doesn't alert her that anything's up, but he's not sorry to see her awareness of his body in her eyes. Since they haven't sparred since that day, this is new, and he's glad. He quirks an eyebrow to show he he's noticed, and she glares at him, sneering. Yep. Just about time. He lets her get a lock on him, flip him, take him down hard on his back. His breath explodes from him as she follows him down, straddling him, her elbow to his throat. This is where he changes the dance. His hands grab her waist and hold her there, snugging her down against him, and he does a little hip shimmy that grinds his raging hard-on against her crotch. She's been so careful not to go there, to keep this professional and collected, that this takes her entirely by surprise.

"Tasha…." He breathes her name softly, like a caress. "I yield." He slowly removes his hands from her hips, raises them above his head, clasps them together and presses them to the mat. She rears back in shock, her blue eyes wide and startled. Not immune to what's happening though, oh no. She's hot as melting sugar in his lap.

"Barton…" she says in consternation.

"Name your forfeit, Tash," he purrs, rubbing against her. "One condition though…"

"What?"

"You have to….claim it….now…."

And oh, there she is. There's his Tasha, her eyes predatory as a hungry tiger's, her barely-contained violence thrumming in her body. She is fierce and fine and his, and oh god he missed her. Those lush lips spread in a slow nasty smile and he swallows as saliva pools in his mouth. She leans down and kisses him, hard and mean, and he growls, and his hips rise to her again. She grabs his hair and forces his head down against the mat.

"Did I tell you you could move?" she purrs. He shakes his head and grins. She laughs, a throaty, husky sound, and orders him to be completely still. He obeys, though his body doesn't want to. She stands up and peels the zipper of her leather catsuit down with agonizing slowness. He's breathing hard as she reveals that warrior's body, scarred and tough, muscled silk. She's breathtaking. She knows this, often uses it, but seeing it in his eyes she believes it. She teases off her bra and panties and stands over him, glorious and naked and flushed with lust. She kneels above his face, presses herself to his eager mouth, and smiles down at him like a cat licking cream.

"Lick me," she says, her voice a throbbing whisper. "Do it slow. Just your mouth."

He groans as his tongue delves between slick, hot folds. She shaves, because some of the outfits she wears in the line are….well…almost not outfits at all. And because when she has to use her sex as a weapon, she leaves behind less DNA this way. He doesn't care. No matter what, or who, she does in the field, right here, this is all that matters. He knows one of the big reasons they are here right now, with his hungry tongue stabbing her hot little clit while she grinds into his face, is because he doesn't care. He licks and sucks and bites, and she closes her eyes and leans back so he can breathe, and rides his mouth like a champion. He stabs into her pussy with his tongue, as deep as he can go, licking the inner walls, pressing his teeth into her clit. He goes back to the swollen little bud and plants soft kisses on the center of her pleasure. He captures it with his lips and suckles tenderly. He swirls his tongue and laps her up like ice cream. He tests whether she's really with this, and rocks his hips as he moans into her cunt. His eyelids flutter when she slaps him, hard, on the inside of his thigh. More fucking like it. When she comes, she digs her fingernails into his arms where she holds him pinned, and his name is heaven on her lips. She collapses, boneless, beside him, and pets him. She raises up on one elbow to smile down at him.

"All right?" she asks softly. He grins.

"More than."

"Good. You may fuck me now," she says, arrogant and snippy. He laughs, rolls with her so she's under him.

"May I?" he chuckles.

"You may."

He reaches down to unfasten his pants, drives himself home hard. She sucks in her breath.

"You had your forfeit, Tasha," he growls in her ear. "Now it's my way."

She sighs as he starts to ride her, hard the way they both like it, and stretches languidly under him.

"Our way, Hawk," she murmurs. "Sorry I was being stupid. Our way." He gasps when her clever pussy clenches tight and laughs helplessly while they fuck each other blind. Their way is a good way indeed.


	3. Getting the Red Out Part One

**Getting the Red Out – Part 1**

In which Hawkeye takes his (and Tony's) life in his own hands, and plays a dangerous game to find out if his plans to clear Tasha's file are going to work

He's seen all the footage of the time Fury had Loki contained in the cell he'd had designed for the Hulk. He's actually watched her part in it over and over. She's fantastic, so honest and open and raw. She plays Loki like a fiddle and the answers he gives her probably save them all from Banner's rage just in the nick of time. He sees how well she makes the Trickster believe she's tricked him. Tasha is a consummate actress. Thing is, he doesn't think anything she tells Loki is a lie. He knows she's killed a lot of people, and knows that a lot of them didn't deserve it. Probably most of the ones she killed before she defected didn't deserve it. Those deaths weigh on her, perhaps even more heavily than the deaths of the agents he killed weighed on him, because at least those agents signed up for this, had known the risks.

She hides it well. Most of the time, even he can't see it. She's at peace with what she is now. She is brilliant, and deadly, and he's very glad she's on their side. She does not regret any of the things she's done as an agent of SHIELD. Not even the hard things. But oh, she does regret. He thinks their kill count is pretty evenly matched. He's sorry for some of the things he's done too, but since he always had a choice, it isn't quite the same. And he kills from a distance. As awful as some might find it, that really is just easier. She has looked into the eyes of almost everyone she's ever killed. She carries every innocent face on her heart like a fucking badge of shame. And she won't show them, not even to him.

He's in awe of what she did for him, especially now that she's not walking on eggshells with him anymore and she'll sink those perfect white teeth in for a bite now and then. He's no pushover, and you're fucking right it is a heady feeling to bend her to his will, to have her helpless under him and know he doesn't have to stop. But sue him if he doesn't like it the other way too. When he worried she was still a little confused by exactly what it was he wanted, he just sent her a link to an alternative lifestyle glossary of terms and told her to look up "switch." It's awesome not to have to talk everything to death. They might stumble some, but they speak each other's language, and it doesn't have a lot of words.

He wishes he could just assassinate her demons for her. He knows how to shoot stuff. He never misses. If he's going to try to do this, he's terrified of missing. This isn't like a recent trauma a friend can beat the crap out of you over to make you see sense. He just doesn't know enough about her past, her REAL past, to be able to see his path. But he cannot bear the dreams. Not his own. His own haven't haunted him for weeks. They're actually mostly the kind that make him wake up aching for her. That's no bad thing. It's hers. She avoids sleeping with him most of the time, but they've worn each other out sufficiently on a few occasions that they've just kind of passed out where they lay. And she dreams. The time she tried to strangle him in his sleep was, yeah ok, scary, but since she wasn't conscious it was relatively easy to fend her off. She doesn't know. He's never telling her. The time she begged some faceless person to forgive her, his heart ached for her. The time she cried, begged for it to stop, screamed for her mommy and daddy not to go in there, whimpered that it hurt…sweet Jesus, she wrecked him. He'd pulled her against him and whispered mindless reassurances into her hair, tears in his eyes, and hating whoever had done this to her. He knows she'd been young when they took her; put her in some kind of special spy school. She doesn't talk about it a lot, but she mentions things. He knows she worked for a Russian intelligence organization not officially sanctioned by the government, and that they weren't the good guys. He also knows she didn't have a choice, and that as soon as one presented itself to her, she ran. He knows she feels she owes Fury her life, because he gave her a chance. For that matter, he kinda feels like he owes Fury a lot for giving her a chance too.

He doesn't know enough. He can't even begin to find a way to free her from the prison in her mind unless he knows what kind of prison he faces. He agonizes. He recriminates. He second guesses. In the end, he goes to see Tony. He knows Tony helped her….do what she did. For him. This bothers him less than he would have thought. He doesn't know why. Maybe it's because a couple of days after it happened, and he ran into Tony in the hall, literally, and Tony grabbed him kind of awkwardly to keep from falling on his ass, and he hissed unintentionally in pain…Tony had looked at him. In that look there had not been pity, or derision. Just respect. Tony's always going to be the world's biggest smartass, but he's changed since he carried that missile through the portal. He'd gone in thinking it was a one-way trip. Not something Clint thought he'd have done a couple of months before. So he's snide, and he's snarky, and he's arrogant (and charming) but he's a little more thoughtful too.

"Tony?" he sticks his head around the doorframe to see if he's intruding. Tony's pacing back and forth in front of holographic screens as usual. His hair is a mess and he's muttering under his breath while he manipulates a visual image of the tesseract portal with his fingers. He spreads it out, makes some adjustments, but his simulation collapses in on itself and implodes. JARVIS' voice comes from somewhere.

"Congratulations, Sir. You've just destroyed the Eastern Seaboard."

"Thank you JARVIS, you're as helpful as ever," grumps Tony. He looks up and waves Clint in. "What's up Hawkman? Alien invasion? Asgardian hijinks? Ooh, did Thor electrocute Fury's new pet robot again? Wait, I know! The Emerald Avenger broke Cleveland!"

Clint laughs. It's hard not to. Tony sees the look on his face though, shoves a drink of some kind in his hand, and gestures him over to a huge, sleek sectional sofa overlooking the city. They sit, and he sniffs the drink suspiciously. He's seen Tony consume some truly vile-looking concoctions, and after the shawarma incident, he feels it's best to be cautious.

"Oh relax, it's a long island iced tea," says Tony, taking a swig of his own. Clint takes a careful sip and decides if the super hero gig doesn't work out, and the economy crashes, Tony could have a future as a bartender.

"Thanks," he says, lifting the glass in a small salute. Tony nods, and they sip in silence for a few minutes. Clint stares out the window, trying to decide how to approach this. Tony shoves his feet off the coffee table, nearly making him spill his drink, and he wonders what the hell it is about people and him and furniture. He glares at Tony and considers the wisdom of this approach.

"So. Spill," says Tony comfortably, ignoring his glare. "What do you need? A Lamborghini? Advice on starting a small business? Fashion advice? Free one…sleeves, Hawk. Sleeves. Shawarma franchise? Case of imported Russian caviar to tempt a certain fiery haired spy we all know and…well. That you know and love?"

"Sleeves get in the way of the bowstring, dickhead," he says comfortably. "Tasha hates caviar. I have a car. And I'm not going there on the Shawarma thing."

"Ok fine. Your loss. It's gonna be big, Barton. Global."

"Considering almost half the world's population is Muslim, I think it probably already is Global. Why, I have no idea. But yeah."

Tony sighs.

"Fine. Rain on my fun. See if I buy you Lichtenstein. Or your own astrophysicist. I have one. Did you know? Fury thinks she's his but he's a dick."

Clint stares at him. Tony's mind is a fascinating place.

"Does Thor know you're calling his woman your own?"

"Hm. Ah. Good point. So, Lichtenstein then."

"Stark…why the fuck would you want to buy Lichtenstein?"

"I don't know. Snoop Dogg tried to rent it once. I won't be one-upped. What are you talking about anyway? You're a very strange man, Barton."

"This was a mistake," he mutters, surging to his feet to flee the room before he has to pour the long island tea over Tony's head. Or shoot him in the foot.

"Oh sit the fuck down Barton. Just trying to lighten the mood. You walk in here with 57 tons of shit weighing you down and I can't let it just slide. What do you need, really?"

Clint looks at the ice melting in his glass and decides to just go for it.

"Natasha's file."

Tony sets his glass down on the slick coffee table in front of him. It rattles. He stares at Clint as though he's just sprouted wings and a tail.

"Dude, are you nuts? First, Fury would eat you for accessing classified information on one of his agents. B, you don't access personal information on the person you're boning if you want to ever do it again. And Twelve, Natasha would kill us if she found out. Both of us. Probably with a toothpick."

"Tony, *I* could kill you with a toothpick…"

"See if I invite you for hors d'ourvres!"

"And really? First, B and Twelve? That's what you're going with?"

"New math. I think it's going to catch on."

"So you can't do it," he sighs, and gets up to leave.

"Whoa whoa whoa there Robin Hood. I didn't say I couldn't do it! But before I say yes, you're gonna have to tell me why you want it."

Clint does get up, but only to walk to the enormous picture window, so he can stare blindly at the city, and keep his back to Tony while he speaks.

"I don't want to violate Tasha's privacy. But…you know what she did for me."

"Hey whoa, no. That's personal shit. I don't know anything."

"Save it. I know she asked you for help. It's cool. We're cool. Fine, you don't know details, and that's fine cause they're not anything I'd want to share with anybody. Ever. But you know…enough. Yeah?"

"Ok. Yeah."

"So Tasha's got a history, and she carries the responsibility for all the people she killed before she defected around like a fuckin hair shirt, and I want to stop it. She…" he turns and looks Tony in the eyes. "She dreams, Stark. I want to stop it. I'd do it alone if I could, but without knowing everything, I'm afraid I'm going to press the wrong trigger and make things worse. She…shit. She had the guts to tear me apart to get at what was eating me. It was ugly. I can only think she had to be scared brainless, but she did it. She has my back. She always has. Get me?"

"One question. Are you going to use what's in her file to hurt her in any way? And how deep do you need me to go?"

"That's two questions. But…hell Tony…yeah, I am. I'm gonna have to, to get past it all. And…get all of it. Whatever Fury has, whatever he's erased. If it exists, I need intel he doesn't have."

Tony looks out the window for a long moment. He sighs.

"Ok. Right answer. If you said you wouldn't hurt her with it, you'd be lying. And then I wouldn't have given you squat. I'll do it. But!" he says, raising his hand to stop Clint's thanks. "It's gonna take time. If you want _all_ of it, including what the pissy Cyclops doesn't have, it's gonna take time."

"Fortunately, thanks to a certain irritating flying phallic symbol I know, we've got time."

"Hey!" protests Tony. "That's just mean."

Clint laughs at him and tosses back the rest of his drink. He claps a hand on Tony's shoulder. Tony returns the favor. As he leaves the room, he fires back over his shoulder,

"Like anybody in this building _doesn't_ know the suit is an extension of your penis!"

He hopes the laser beam that scores a fist-sized burn mark in the wall above his head as he turns the corner is a deliberate miss.

It's more than a week. Now that he's settled himself on this course of action, the waiting chafes. But every time he sees Tony, when no one is looking, there is a subtle head-shake. Not yet. Despite e the fact that he can perch on a 4-inch ledge hundreds of feet above a long fall with a short stop at the end waiting for hours for his target to appear, he doesn't handle this kind of waiting well. The press loves them, and there are stories, profiles, and interviews with all of them. Fury makes it mandatory. They may have prevented the end of the world as people know it, but really….they'd also CAUSED the end of the world as people knew it. Who they are… the whole fucked up lot of them together, is something altogether new. If they are to achieve the goals Fury has for the Initiative, the public has to love them, not fear them. They have publicity agents. Clint doesn't know how Natasha refrains from killing hers. The little turd wants her to play on her tormented past. And how he found out about ANY of it, Clint would like to know. Actually, he's pretty sure Fury fed it to him, the bastard. He knows Tasha would do anything for him. If he hadn't agreed that it really was important, he'd have cheerfully introduced the agent to the pointy end of one of his explosive arrows. So she answers questions about subjects she hates broaching, like where she grew up and how she came to join SHIELD. Some of the information is made up for the purpose, but enough of it is true that he sees shadows lurking in her eyes all the time now. He hates them with a single-minded passion that surprises him.

One night he returns to his rooms to find a thick folder on his bed. Natasha is in Washington with the Director until tomorrow. With hands that shake just a little, he picks it up, carries it to the sofa. Opens it. Pours himself a drink. Reads.

The kill list doesn't faze him. He'd been wrong, hers is longer. That part doesn't bother him, not the way it bothers her. Data on locations she has infiltrated, mission reports she has filed…they run the gamut from hilarious to hair-raising. The roles she's played along the way are fascinating, and he gazes at photo after photo of her looking like a stranger. Her training is that good. When she's in deep cover, she _is _that stranger. She has been everything from a chambermaid to a courtesan. She's been a lawyer, a scientist, a call-girl, a model, a ballerina. One thing is missing from the list of roles she's played. One that makes him wonder, considering she was sent on her first mission when she was…he looks at the report and is sickened…sixteen. He files what's not there away in his brain for future use, because he thinks it might be the key to helping him absolve her guilt. The other thing he wants, it's both easier and harder, because it's there in black and white, and is horrible. He understands the dreams. He knows her parents died in a fire in Stalingrad when she was around 11 years old. He wonders if _she_ knows on a conscious level that it wasn't an accident. He doesn't think so. It isn't in Fury's file and that's the one she would have seen. Her dreams know though. She begs them not to go in the building. The one rigged with explosives. Her dream self knows the loving uncle who rescued her and subsequently became her guardian is also the one who arranged her parents' deaths. That same uncle enrolled her in a very special school just a year later. One where she was brainwashed, educated, molded into the perfect spy. The perfect killer. She did her first assassination when she was fifteen, her first undercover when she was sixteen. Was given in marriage to a Russian pilot at 18. It was a deep cover mission, one she never really even understood herself, but he sees she used her training in hypnosis to work changes on her husband at night while he slept. She was told he died two years later. According to SHIELD's files, he did. She still believes he did. Clint's heart wrenches when he sees that this isn't true. Jesus, can he do this, knowing that if it works, he could lose her? From all he can tell, she loved Shostakov. If he succeeds, gives her her life back, the parts stolen from her, he'll lose her. He shoves the thought ruthlessly down where he doesn't have to listen to it anymore. There's enough in the file he can feel sick about that he doesn't have to focus on this one. Not yet. He reads and re-reads, takes notes. Pulls photos. Builds up a towering case of rage. Finds some things that make his blood run cold. But when he's finished, he thinks he knows what to do. He *thinks* he knows how to wash the red out of her file; though it depends on how she reacts to something he intends to try. He's pretty sure he knows how to give her back the girl she was before they took her, though that depends on whether he has the courage to go through with it.

He proceeds to Stark tower. The prototype sparring droids are awesome. He takes one apart with his bare hands, and it wears the face of Ivan Petrovich, Natasha's "Uncle." Tony yells after him as he stomps out that he can expect a bill for the damages.

"Seven million, Barton!" he hollers. "And that's DOLLARS! Not rubles!"

The next day, she's home. They have dinner in his rooms. He's programmed his Netflix to a Japanese Anime show. She rolls her eyes at him watching cartoons. He defends himself.

"Hey! Girls in those tiny little plaid skirts are hot," he says, waggling his eyebrows at her. He pretends not to notice that she's gone very still.

"Barton, they're _cartoons_," she says mockingly. "Just wait til I tell Stark you get your rocks off watching cartoon girls in sick costumes."

"Wait til I tell Stark you sing showtunes in the shower," he fires back.

"I do not!"

"No, but I can be really convincing. No seriously, Tash," he says, grabbing her wrist and pulling her into his lap. She punches him in the arm, which makes his hand go numb. He's pleased she went easy on him. "Ow. Shit. No shut up a minute," he says, tightening his arms when she struggles. She's embarrassed, and doesn't want him to know. "I can't help it Tash, I'm a perv. Don't get me wrong. There's nothing sexy to me about little girls. That's just…ugh. Just no. But…" he's doing a pretty creditable job of acting embarrassed himself, which turns out not to be such as stretch as this is getting weird for him. Mainly because, ulterior motives aside, his cock is stiffening as he pictures her. Well fuck. "But…you know…if you wanted to…I mean if you ever _would_…well fuck."

"Oh just spit it out, Hawk. You're being stupid," she says.

"Just…well goddamnit Tash, you'd be fucking hot in a schoolgirl outfit like that, that's all."

She goes very, very still.

"Hey, I'm sorry! If that presses any buttons in a bad way, just forget I said it. Really, it's not a big deal," he says quickly. He has gambled, because posing as a young girl was mysteriously absent from her file. And with her huge china blue eyes and mop of curly hair, it should have been there. He's taken a huge gamble that it isn't there for one very good reason. He's gambling that she refused to go there. And he's gambling HUGE on her reasons for refusing. She squirms. It's almost imperceptible, but she squeezes her thighs together just the tiniest bit. Oh score. He's not wrong.

"No," she says quietly. "It's fine. That's not something I ever…"

"Oh good," he sighs. "Had a bad moment there. Wouldn't want to make you have to kill me," he says lightly.

"You're an idiot, Barton," she says absently. He lets it go, because she's uncomfortable. But she's staring almost unblinkingly at the television. He doesn't bring it up again.

She's waiting in his bedroom when he comes home from target practice three days later. He knows she's here, because he can smell her. Tasha has her own unique scent, leather and some kind of soap she uses that reminds him of amber, and something else he can't even define that probably just has to do with pheromones.

"Tasha?" he calls cautiously. He never knows when she shows up if he should expect to be ambushed in some kind of alarming way.

"Did you bring me a present?" comes a voice from his bedroom. He freezes in the act of pulling off one of his boots and hops on one foot for a second. The voice is Tasha's. Sort of. There's a tone he's never heard before. It's playful. Teasing. It's softer than her voice, pitched a little different. He's still standing there trying to get a handle on what's going on, when she comes to stand in the bedroom doorway, leaning against it with laughter in her eyes. He stands there with one boot in his hand like he's been hit between the eyes with a brick.

She blows a gigantic pink bubble and pops it, twirling her gum around and around her index finger. She's….he thinks she's wearing pink lip gloss. He focuses on this because his brain is just not willing to process the REST of what she's wearing. His dick is perfectly happy to process it, so he makes himself really look at her and think about what's happening here. The floor is safe, he thinks desperately, and starts there. She's…is she wearing penny loafers? He thinks so. White socks hug her shapely calves and end just below her kneecaps. Fuck, that's as far as he can go without short circuiting something. The skirt brushes the tops of her thighs. It's a bright red Campbell plaid kilt. If she turned around and bent over, he'd be able to see her panties. He wishes fervently she'd turn around and bend over. A black cardigan sweater is knotted carelessly around her waist, while a white sailor-style blouse with a red men's tie completes the outfit. Unless you count the bright pink bubble gum, candy colored lip gloss, and the wide black headband holding her tousled red curls back from her face. He's not absolutely sure, but he thinks her eyes are sparkling. Tasha's eyes. Sparkling. He realizes he's staring at her with his mouth hanging open, and shuts it with a snap. He shakes himself mentally because if he fucks this up now, all his plans go for shit. She isn't just putting on a naughty costume to wear while they have sex. She's _different_, and that means this is…more.

He sits down and takes off his other boot, smiling at her.

"What have you done to deserve a present, sweetheart?" he asks, teasing her back. She pouts at him a little. If he hadn't seen her (from a distance) do this while posing as a model on an assignment once, he'd have sworn there was no way in hell Nastasha even knew HOW to pout. And damn if she doesn't do it pretty, too. He's suddenly seized by awareness of how terrifyingly courageous she is. He's only looking at the fun part of what he's proposing to do for her, and he's terrified. There was no fun part to what she did to him. She never flinched. This stiffens his resolve. He's not screwing this up. Besides, he's been following her lead for years. This is the easy part.

"Welllll," she says, as though she's trying really hard to think of something good she's done today. He takes a gamble.

"How was school?"

She frowns at him and makes a face. It takes every ounce of self-control he has not to be laughing out loud in delight right now. She's fucking good at this! The Black Widow. Making pouty faces!

"School's boring," she says petulantly.

"Didn't you have a test today?"

One toe digs at the carpet and her eyes slant away from him for just a second, then they're back, wide and guileless.

"No."

"Hm. No?"

"Nuh-uh."

"So all that Chemistry you were studying was….?"

She shrugs.

"You _were_ studying, weren't you?" he asks sternly. She nods, a little sullenly. He hopes like hell he's doing this right, because he desperately wants to come through for her. To find out that Natasha has a sexual roleplaying fantasy this far outside what anyone could ever guess is shocking. He thinks he knows why. Tasha's childhood was taken from her. She was turned into a weapon before she had her first date. She killed a man before she had her first kiss. There is so much she doesn't remember. There's no mention of sexual abuse in her file anywhere, during her adolescence or later. He knows she's allowed herself to be raped as part of her cover, which, ok, makes him want to kill people. A lot. But this…whatever the fuck it is they're doing now…he thinks subconsciously she's taking back those experiences she never got to have.

"Natasha," he growls, warningly. She sighs.

"Sort of."

"Define 'sort of'"

She rolls her eyes, does a little foot stomp that's so fucking cute he wants to cuddle her. Him. Cuddle her. Jesus. She sighs heavily in a put upon way, then cuts those spectacular blue eyes at him. She's sucking on the tip of one finger as she sashays over to where he sits and slides into his lap. Her arms steal around his neck and she leans in to kiss him sweetly on the cheek. He gently puts one finger on her cheek and turns her face so she's looking at him.

"What did I tell you, Natasha?"

This question is key, because he's working without a script here, and he's praying with everything he's got that she's going to throw him one now. How old is she? How old is he? What's their relationship? Is this scenario sexual or not? If he tanks this, nothing else he longs to give her is going to work. C'mon Tash, he thinks, gazing into her eyes. Throw me a bone.

"You said if you were gonna be my boyfriend I hadda keep my grades up and finish school and not get in trouble at home. You said you're too old for me and I don't know what I'm doing and you won't let me throw my life away cuz…cuz…you're an old poop head."

He bites the inside of his cheek so hard he tastes blood because she's so adorable he wants to laugh til his sides ache. But oh thank every god that's ever been, at least he's not working without a script anymore. And thank goodness they're not doing the preadolescent thing and she's not going to call him Daddy. He doesn't think he could.

"Twenty Five doesn't make me a poop head, princess," he says sternly, and THAT'S apparently the right word because he hears her suck in a tiny breath and she leans her forehead against his. Thank you thank you thank you. "But I *am* too old for you, and you *will* finish your education. Now. What did you get on your Chemistry test?"

She heaves a put-upon sigh and wiggles on his lap a little. He gives her a little warning slap on her thigh and she gasps.

"I don't know," she says breathlessly.

"You didn't get your grade back yet?"

"Nope."

"And if I call school and talk to your teacher, is he going to tell me the same thing?"

She shakes her head violently.

"No no no, don't call school Clint. Don't be mean."

He takes her by the shoulders and looks into her eyes, drawing her to her feet as he stands up. She tries to kiss him. He kisses her back, but not like she wants. He keeps it chaste, and draws her into his bedroom. He points to the bed and orders her to sit there until he gets back. She pouts and glares at him and sniffs, but she obeys.

He goes back into the living room, and feels absolutely ridiculous while he talks into his silent cell phone, pretending to have a conversation with an imaginary high school principal. He hopes inanely that the answers he's gotten are the right one, and leans his head against the kitchen entryway and allows his shoulders to shake in silent laughter at this thought before he paints an _extremely_ stern expression on his face and goes back into the bedroom. She's staring at the floor. He stands in front of her silently for several very long moments, and allows himself to tap his toe on the floor a couple of times, hoping that's not too much.

"Natasha."

She shakes her head.

"Natasha, do you have something you want to tell me?" he asks. He's glad there seems to be some amount of fill-in-the-blank option to this thing. She sags, defeated.

"Fine. Me and Janie cut school today and went to the mall," she says quickly, in a whisper.

"I see." He sits down on the bed beside her and takes her hand. "And what did I tell you was going to happen if you did that again?" She looks away, and he pulls her chin towards him again, gazes solemnly into her eyes.

"I don't want to tell you," she whines.

"Princess…"

"You said you were gonna spank me," she says in a tiny voice.

Praise Jesus, Mary and Joseph, he thinks wildly, and he's just hoping his raging hard-on isn't too distracting.

"Hard," she continues. Oh fuck, she's killing him. "With your belt. Til I cry." He's only thankful he's already sitting down. He sits there for a minute, pulling himself together. He's also feeling quite a bit of trepidation at the thought of spanking Tasha hard enough to make her cry. He's not sure it's possible, unless she wants it to happen. Which, apparently, probably, she does. She leans her head on his shoulder and takes a shaky breath.

"Do…do you have to, Clint?"

Oh god, please let him not screw this up. Please. He lifts her chin and lays a tender kiss on her lips.

"Yes Princess," he says quietly. "I have to."

Her breath hitches in what is almost a tiny sob.

"Ok," she whispers, so faintly he can barely hear her. She stands up, turns to face the bed, slides her thumbs up under the hem of her tiny little skirt and slowly pulls her panties down. Her soft white cotton panties. Fuck. Just…..fuck. She bends over and puts her hands on the bed, shoulder width apart. She's actually trembling. "I'm really sorry Clint," she says, looking over her shoulder at him with wide sad blue eyes. He wonders wildly if he may be having a heart attack. "Please don't hate me."

His heart actually leaps up his throat and attempts to throttle his tongue when he realizes what he's going to say next. What it's possible he will never say to her outside of this exact scenario, because words like this aren't them. Knows that when he swore to her she had always owned him it was as close as he'd ever thought he'd get. But the words are no less true, just because they don't say them.

"Of course I don't hate you Princess," he says, and his voice is a little hoarse. "I love you." He says it smoothly, with no hesitation. Her eyes shine like the sun.

"I love you too," she says steadily.

Slowly, while her eyes follow every motion of his hands, and while his own never waver from her face, he unbuckles his belt. He draws it from the loops, and her lips part as she starts to breathe harder. He has acute senses. She's more aroused than she's ever been. Thank god. He grasps the buckle of the belt, wraps the strap around his hand a few times, leaving a two-foot length of supple, oiled black leather dangling by his side. She ducks her head and stares at his bedspread. He steps to her side, sweeps her skirt up over her hips, and tucks the hem into her waistband. She shifts, parts her legs a little bit. He bites his lip. He allows himself the luxury of running his empty hand over the exquisite round curve of her bare ass. He's seen it before, bitten her there, left bruises with his fingers when he clenched her in both hands, enjoyed the fantastic view while he's plowed into her from behind like a fucking stallion, but this is different. She's so different. He hesitates for a second, because he has no idea how hard he's actually supposed to spank her. If she was Tash, he'd know not to hold back. This girl though, his Princess, he's unsure of how to proceed. She looks back over her shoulder at him, and he can only hope he doesn't look as nonplussed as he feels. She stares steadily into his eyes, and for just a second, she's Tash, and she looks unflinchingly, and she nods. Then she's gone. He lets his breath out with a sigh, and pulls his arm back as far as it will go. She's his Princess, but she's told him what she needs. He realizes he should have just taken her at her word, because there's honesty between them. Hard, he thinks. Til she cries.

The belt comes down with an earsplitting CRACK on her waiting bottom. It leaves a dark-red band imprinted across her creamy flesh. Her body jolts, and she gasps, but that's all. He does it again. Again. Every stroke sends a jolt of electricity straight to his groin. He has no idea if it makes him a monster that this just fucking does it for him. Tender lovemaking and soft caresses will never be their style. Not that he can't (he's not actually sure she can) but that the violence they live by reflects in how they love each other. They both have so much fucking scar tissue, literal and figurative, that sometimes ripping past it is how they feel alive. He came to terms with the fact that he's just wired differently than most people a long time ago. He doesn't know if she has, but all he can do is take her at face value when he pulls her hair and she sinks her teeth in him and it makes them both come harder than if they weren't.

She whimpers a little as he spanks her, and the sound is so exquisite he wants to stop and suck it from her mouth like candy, but he doesn't. He keeps up a steady rhythm, and he doesn't let up. She's gasping now. He's so focused on doing this right, not missing his target (pshyeah right), on covering every gorgeous inch of her sweet beautiful ass with hot red stinging pain, that he's startled when she speaks.

"Oh please," she whispers. He nearly drops the belt. Tasha doesn't beg. He tied her up once and went down on her for hours without letting her come and she still wouldn't beg. She can withstand torture and smile. It's part of her conditioning. She explained it to him once, years ago on a mission when they had to escape a terrorist training camp in North Korea on foot, and she had a broken ankle. She has been taught to go away inside her mind to a place where nothing touches her. It's a white room, she says, cool and soft and peaceful, with impenetrable walls of diamond. It is silent and surrounds her with light. It sounds kind of beautiful when she describes it, but loses something when he remembers why it's there. And how someone must have taught her to build it. But she begs, and it staggers him. This…persona…which he seriously doubts anyone has ever seen before, comes from before the white room.

"Please Clint," she whimpers. "I'm sorry. I'll be good, I promise. Please, it hurts. I'll be good, I'll be good!"

For a moment he's horrified, wants to hurl his belt on the floor and take her in his arms and…slay a dragon for her or something. Then she looks over her shoulder and she's pouting. She opens her legs a little more and sticks her bottom out towards him with a tiny hip wiggle. Such a naughty girl. He gets that somehow, the begging is something she's giving herself, something that is freeing for her in some way, and yet that she doesn't truly want mercy. Not now. Not yet.

"Bad girls are always sorry when they get caught," he says warmly. "I know it hurts you, Princess. But it's for your own good."

Abruptly, he sits down on the bed and hauls her over his lap. This plays hell on his libido but unsettles her. She gasps. He adjusts her so her head points at the floor and her red backside is perfectly positioned for further punishment. He thinks with him touching her, the intimacy of it will make it easier for him to break through her control to give her what she needs. He spanks her as hard as he can, now bringing the belt down across her creamy thighs, and she squeals in pain. She's squirming in his lap, and it's killing him. He grits his teeth, hauls her thighs apart, and snaps the belt against her tender inner thighs. Her body jerks and she goes abruptly silent. He snaps the belt down harder, and she shudders. She's close, he thinks. He spanks her faster, back and forth between her bottom and her quivering thighs, and suddenly her body is shaking, and she wails in pain, and her voice breaks and she starts to cry, great gulping sobs that shock him to his soul. The belt drops forgotten to the floor and he hauls her into his arms, draped on his lap, and rocks her back and forth while she cries. He presses his lips to her curls and whispers to her.

"Shhh. Shhh, Princess. It's all right. That's my good girl. It's ok. Shh."

She throws her arms around his neck and her hot lush mouth trembles and her breath is like a caress on his throat. He suppresses a shudder and cuddles her close.

"I'm suh…suh…sorry," she cries. She sounds brokenhearted. She repeats it, over and over again. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. He doesn't think she's a teenaged girl with a stern older boyfriend anymore. He thinks she's Tasha again, and his heart clenches in his chest. He mutters into her hair.

"It's all right. Shh now baby, I got you."

Her sobs slowly quiet, and she rests her head on his shoulder. He holds her, and sits very still while he waits to see what's supposed to happen next. Her mouth tickles his throat and he feels the tip of her tongue touch his skin. He inhales deeply through his nose. She wriggles and shimmies in his lap until she's straddling him, and her fingers stroke through his hair. Tears sparkle on her eyelashes.

"Ohh Barton," she purrs, her voice thick and hoarse from crying. "You are SO getting laid right now."

He fucking hopes so. Her pussy has soaked through the crotch of his cargo pants.

"Didn't fuck it up, huh?" he asks huskily. She bites at his lips and kisses him deeply.

"Not even a little. You're wearing too many clothes."

She pushes him back on the bed and sucks on his throat as she unbuttons his shirt. She bites and licks his nipples and he groans. Her busy hands unfasten his pants, shove them roughly down over his hips. She tugs at her tie and he reaches to grab her wrists. She raises an eyebrow.

"Leave it on," he growls. She smiles wickedly at him, rolls off him to lie on her stomach on the bed. She raises her hips, her cherry red ass driving him crazy. Her legs slide out, open, and her pussy yawns sweetly at him between her thighs. He slides his hand between her legs, entering her with two fingers while he divests himself of his shirt. She's blazing hot and slick inside, and her pussy grasps his fingers hungrily. He lowers himself between her legs and she arches up for him, panting. He slides in slow and deep, hissing through his teeth because it's so, so good. The heat from her spanked bottom makes him crazy. He props himself up on one elbow, grasps her ass with his other hand. She gives him a tiny whimper. He knows damn well it's a gift, cause she doesn't need to anymore, but it rolls his eyes back in his skull anyway. God, just…god damn she's so hot he thinks she'll burn him up. That they'll just fucking ignite one of these nights and spiral up into the sky together like sparks from a bonfire. He'll die a happy man.

Later, as he rubs lotion on her beaten, welted backside, because he wants to and she lets him, he talks to her, quietly, about what he wants to do. He had thought about just springing it on her, as she'd done to him, but he decides if he does that, he'll lose her. He tells her he has information for her on some things that happened in her past. She wants to know what, of course, but he asks her to trust him. He feels her hesitate, but that's ok, because her past has a lot of blind spots in it and he knows they frighten her. Being scared pisses Tasha off.

"OK," she says finally.

"This thing…tonight…"

"Don't make me kill you, Clint."

"Ok yeah, please don't. But listen. First of all, oh my god, you're amazing. I'm stunned. It was perfect."

"Ok for me too," she says warily.

"Hm. Can we just be brutally honest here for a minute? It fucking did it for you Tash, like nothing I have ever seen. You've been carrying that around inside and…well fuck, I'm humbled that you trusted me with it. I know, I know," he raises his hands defensively when she tenses. "I'm not trying to go all heartfelt on you and shit cause god, I really hope we can do that again. But…that persona lets you touch part of you that you aren't even capable of showing otherwise. Yeah?"

"Yeah," she sighs.

"So…this is going to sound nuts, but some of the things I need to show you are going to be easier for you to accept if you're…her. Will you…will you try, for me?"

She's silent for a long time.

"Ok. But seriously Clint?"

"Hm?"

"Don't make me kill you."


	4. Getting the Red Out Part Two

**Getting the Red Out – Part Two**

In which Hawkeye undertakes the most important and most dangerous mission of his life.

It's another week before he screws up his courage enough to take the leap into the abyss that Natasha is lost in. As he studies her file, he's nauseated when he becomes aware how lost she really is. And she doesn't know it. It's like her entire memory, almost her whole life, is nothing but a scab, and he's proposing to rip it off and open the gaping wound it covers up. Christ, he must be insane. The amount of data she's had buried in her so deep she doesn't know it's there is awesome. And not in a good way. It's awesome in a "Oh my fucking god that's just not possible" kind of way.

He hopes, he prays, that if he can first unlock the woman the child Natalia Romanova would have grown up to be, she will be receptive to believing what he's going to tell her. The only way he can think of to unlock the smothering layers of hypnotic suggestion and brainwashing she's undergone is to push her backwards through it. It turns his bowels to water when he thinks what that'll put her through. He has no idea if she'll be able to let him. If he doesn't tread lightly enough, if he doesn't play the part he's creating for himself well enough, he knows without a doubt that her training may well take over and she will kill him. Well fuck it. He'd lay down his life for her without a second thought. Laying it on the line for her just isn't that different.

He shops, which is a little odd for him. He doesn't think he's ever set foot inside an antique shop. He gets Tony to pull some strings for him and find him an old empty building matching his specifications. It's an abandoned orphanage, built around the end of the 19th century, and abandoned 15 years ago. He thinks maybe Tony just buys it, but he doesn't ask. He's too focused on his tasks to bother with Stark dropping a couple million for a moldering old building. He can use it to host Halloween parties, or give it to charity, or demolish it and build a Shawarma factory for all he cares. He gathers supplies, requisitions equipment, orders stuff off the internet. And every spare moment, he reads her file. Over and over. Memorizing, researching, delving, and all the while it makes him sicker and sicker. The one thing that makes his heart ache the most is that what he reads tells him Natasha didn't become the stone killer she believes herself to be until that memory was planted in her head, a mere year before she defected to the United States. She must have known what they'd done, on some level, he thinks. Jesus, he admires her so much. That the strength of her will, the force of her personality was too fucking big, that his balls of steel lover was just too goddamn hardcore for them to keep her as their pawn. That she turned her back on a dozen years of torture, brainwashing, hypnosis, conditioning, drugs, and manipulation and despite it, despite all that _SHIT_ she had still….STILL spat in their faces and walked away. When it was over, if he was lucky enough to still be allowed to call her his…oh hell, his anything…lover, friend, partner, team mate…if she wanted to burn every last one of them who still remained to the fucking ground, he would help her. If it took the rest of his life, he'd fucking help her.

The only times he's ever seen Tasha vulnerable were in the moments after she'd ripped away every shred of dignity and self-respect he owned and crawled to him while he lay bleeding and shaking on the floor….and when she had trusted him enough to allow herself to act out her ageplay roleplaying fantasies with him. He thinks about that with some bitterness now, because it had been one of the hottest things he'd ever done, and he's pretty sure she'll never go there again after this is over. It's nearly killing him that he's probably going to spoil that for her, but he needs….no he positively _requires_ that she be vulnerable when he drops the hammer that he hopes will crack the shell covering all the shit inside her. Her will is stronger than his. If he doesn't catch her off guard, he really doesn't think it's going to work. He's stopped looking in mirrors. His can't stand to look into his own eyes. He's going to betray her. Jesus, if he fucks it up, he'll deserve it when she kills him. If he doesn't, maybe someday she'll forgive him. He tries to comfort himself with the fact that he's already warned her a little, already asked her to trust him, to try…whatever it is he's going to try. He's just not going to tell her when. And he knows damn good and well that if she knew what he'd really been asking for, she'd never have said yes.

"Did I tell you Tony bought a cool old building?" he notes casually as they eat dinner together in his rooms. She raises an eyebrow.

"You've taken a sudden interest in real estate?" she asks drily.

"Well…no…"

"Then you've taken a sudden interest in Stark?" she continues, both eyebrows up now, mocking him. "Because I gotta admit, Barton. You two would be cute together."

He chokes on his bite of steak.

"Jesus Tash, why would you say something like that? You want me to throw up things I forgot I ate?"

"Oh, I don't know Clint. You should be more open to experimentation. Though I will say, if we're bringing in a third, could you maybe think about asking Thor instead of Tony? Mostly he doesn't make me want to kill him. And Jane says he's a…ha…god in the sack."

Well for fuck's sake if she keeps saying insane things like that, he's not going to be able to even finish his thought, on account of his brain will have run shrieking into another dimension to escape that particular mental image. She's laughing at him.

"Ha fucking ha, Romanoff," he says with as much dignity as he can muster while she's laughing at him. "Just remember this moment. I will make you pay for it!" He hopes she's still speaking to him long enough for that to be true. She stops laughing and her eyes darken as her pupils dilate.

"Promise?" she asks huskily.

"Damn right I promise," he growls. "And speaking of coming full circle."

"When did we do that?"

"Stark bought an old orphanage upstate. He hasn't decided what to do with it yet. I thought maybe we could go check it out."

"You have strangely shaped circles Clint. Now it's sudden interest in architecture? Or orphans? Oh god, it's not the one you lived in is it? I didn't mean…" She knows his parents died when he was only about 4 years old and that he had spent his first years as a ward of the state. He waves this away.

"No no no. Shut up and listen. There's a wing that's all classrooms and stuff. I thought….um…I thought maybe you could wear the outfit? Y'know?"

She looks baffled for a second and then her expression clears with dawning realization.

"Oh! Hm…sounds perverted. Let's do it. When?"

"Tomorrow. Meet me on the roof at 1:00."

"You're on."

The sight of Tasha piloting a helijet in a schoolgirl uniform is both bizarre and still arousing. If he wasn't feeling sick over what was coming once they'd landed, he'd probably be feeling her up right now. She asks what's in the duffle bag he tosses into the bird before they take off. He kisses her on the nose and tells her to be patient. She laughs a little. It's almost a giggle. He's both glad and furious with himself. That she's already halfway into the role even though she knows she's going to be flying an expensive and dangerous machine a couple hundred miles means he did a good enough job the first time around that she trusts him with this part of her now, that it's already growing comfortable for her. He's also glad because it sends his chances of success ratcheting up to maybe 10% instead of an icicle's chance in hell. At the same time he loathes himself for it.

They land on an open spread of weedy lawn behind the big old stone building. It really is kind of cool, he thinks, though it also reminds him vaguely of something about a horror movie about the inmates in an asylum with a demonic doctor who experiments on them until their rage and despair haunt the place and it starts eating people. This makes him think maybe he watches too many horror movies. The windows are dark and grungy, and a few are broken or boarded over. There's some graffiti on the walls. Gang signs, dirty words, peace symbols. Kenzie loves Javontay 4 Eva. He wonders who they are and if she really does still love Javontay. The front doors have a big iron gate with a padlock over them. He has a key to the smaller side entrance. He unlocks It and they step in. Something skitters away. It's dusty inside, and smells of mildew and disuse. She shivers, ever so slightly. He wonders if this is how it smelled where she lived. Considering the state of things in some of the parts of Russia he's seen, he doesn't doubt it. This is the school wing. He's made sure they enter here, as he doesn't want them distracted by the desire to explore the rest of the building. He takes her elbow, not her hand. One more step to put her in the mindset of a young girl, under the control of her educators. Her wardens, more like it. He leads her to a classroom, one with the windows still intact. It's a little dim, due to the grime coating the glass, but it's light enough. Rows of student desks still wait, overlooked by a heavy wood teacher's desk in the front. The blackboard is askew, some its hardware rusted away. There's a soda can and some old junk food wrappers in a corner, but he ignores them. Tasha's staring at the room with wide eyes, breathing a little harder. He turns her towards him, looks into her face sternly. Her tongue comes out to moisten her lips.

"Sit there until I return," he says harshly, pointing at the middle desk in the front row. She hangs her head a little and nods, goes silently and sits. The metal legs of the desk grate on the floor. It's too small for her. Her knees bump the bottom of the writing surface. She folds her hands atop it and stares at them. Fuck. She's precious. What he feels for her is tearing at his throat and shrieking into his brain that he can't. He mustn't. It's calling him a monster. Then he hears her voice in his head, cool and matter of fact.

"Coward."

He turns and walks out of the room. He takes his time changing clothes. He lights one of the pack of cigarettes and smokes it while he takes things out of the bag, puts them in his pockets. It's been a lot of years since he smoked, and it burns his throat and lungs. Makes him a little light headed when the nicotine hits his bloodstream. Her handlers would have smoked though, so he does too. He takes an old leather briefcase out of the duffle, one of the things he acquired at the antique store. It's the old satchel style, and smells faintly of pipe tobacco. He places more things inside it. Walks back to the door of the classroom. Takes a deep breath. Opens the door.

Her head turns towards him and her pupils dilate as she takes in his slightly baggy brown trousers, plain brown leather wingtips, pale blue dress shirt…thin and cheaply made, the sleeveless white undershirt showing through, the slightly moth-eaten brown cardigan sweater. He doesn't give her a chance to sink into roleplay. He won't violate her trust that much. She's already open to it, immersed in the clothing she wears, the school environment, his own change into the clothing of an older authority figure, and that's as far as he can bear to have her sink in before he yanks the rug out from under her.'

"_Fonaryi stolb_," he says quietly in Russian. Why the fucker who started this chose 'lamp post' as a trigger escapes him, but he guesses it's meant to be an uncommon phrase. She goes rigid, her eyes unfocused and blind. The hair on the back of his neck ruffles as he watches her…vanish. Like throwing a switch, she becomes someone else. Her feet shuffle nervously. She hugs her arms around her waist and hunches her shoulders a little. Her eyes dart nervously around the room.

"_Vy menya slyshite?"_ (Can you hear me?) he asks.

"_Da."_

"_Kak tebya zovut?"_ (What is your name?)

"_Natalia Alianova Romanova,"_ she answers. Her voice is not her own. She speaks in the high, pure soprano of a young, frightened girl.

"_Skol'ko vam let?" _ (How old are you?)

"_Ya dvenadtsat' let." _(Twelve years old.)

Jesus. Fuck. She's shivering like she's cold, frightened, alone. Oh hell, she IS all those things. And it's him doing it to her. He wants to pick her up, wrap his strong arms around her and chase away the cold, the darkness. They're strong enough to hold her. More than. He's going to make things worse instead.

"_Vernitesʹ v nochʹ vashi roditeli umerli." _(Go back to the night your parents died). He takes an antique gold pocket watch out of his pocket, holds it by the chain so it spins slowly, swaying gently back and forth.

She whimpers.

"_Ya ne khochou."_ (I don't want to.)

His hands are shaking so hard he almost drops the stun gun when he takes it out of the satchel. Fortunately, she can't see him. Those wide blue eyes are unseeing. She is not in here in this empty building in upstate New York. She is in a cold, utilitarian room in a cold, spare school for special little girls, in a cold city called Stalingrad, facing a cold, uncaring Psychiatrist named Dubrovsky. Clint actually really hopes this guy is still alive. He wants to pay him a special visit. Oh fuck it. Face facts. The list of people to whom he wants to pay special visits is pretty long. The stun gun is on its lowest setting, but her high, thin, helpless scream of pain when he presses it to her body and presses the button still feels like icy needles piercing his heart. He tries to put himself into the shoes of the Doctor who buried the young Natalia Romanova under layers and layers of hypnosis, until she became a blank canvas upon which they could replace her with a killer. Somehow he thinks it was a little bit easier for her to slip into the role of cruel Dominatrix. He can't do it. So he remains solidly and horribly himself, and he destroys her with his eyes wide open.

He makes her watch her parents die, and shatters the walls they've built around that night so that she watches them murdered. She screams for them not to go into the building. Begs them to listen. Her pure, clear childish voice is devastated with horror and betrayal. He uses the same tricks they used to create her false memories to strip them away. He bullies and electrocutes her body while she sobs and shudders and begs. He wrecks the illusion of a kind and loving Uncle and shows her Petrovich as he really was. Murdering her parents because she was special, and he wanted her for the program. Cold, unfeeling, cruel to her. A monster. When he is finished, the walls between Natalia Romanova and Natasha Romanoff are gone. She remembers who she was. She's sobbing, helpless, blind with terror. The child she was is shattered, her blue eyes dazed with horror. He gives her one more command before he proceeds to the next step.

"_Kogda ya dayu komandu , vy vernetesʹ k sebe. Vy nikogda ne zabudete yeshche raz." _(When I give the command, you will return to yourself. You will never forget again.)

He utters the phrase, watches awareness creep back into her eyes. She hurls herself from her chair, away from him, crouches in the corner like a wary cat. Her eyes are wild. She has never remembered what happened to her outside the auspices of hypnosis. She remembers now. He doesn't know what she'll do. He doesn't give her a chance.

"_Krasnye slony," _he hisses. Another trigger. She scrambles to her feet. She's a little awkward, and there's burning hatred in her eyes. He's taken her to another place, the place they debriefed her after assignments, picking her memories apart, planting whatever they wanted her to recall. She's a little gangly, a little less deadly graceful than his Tasha. He laughs bitterly in his head that he has the temerity to think of her as his now. She's a girl still, but older. Experienced. Only she remembers what they've done to her now, and she hates. She draws herself up straight, and stares straight at him, unflinching.

"_Nam nuzhno obsuditʹ nekotorye iz vashikh missiĭ." _(We need to discuss some of your missions.)

"_Da, Direktore," _she replies, her voice utterly devoid of emotion.

"_Ivanova. Prenko. Davidovich,"_ he snaps out three names from her files. He knows she counts these among the ones she should suffer for. Ivanova was a priest, who had been killed because he had sheltered enemies of the state. Prenko was a simple shopkeeper, father of six, who had refused to pay protection to a bullyboy of a regional Mafiya boss who had been in favor with her organization. Davidovich was a ballerina, a rising star in the highly competitive Russian ballet world, who had on occasion smuggled forged travel visas to family members of athletes and performers outside of Russia, who were being kept virtual prisoners by various Mafiya families who liked having sports stars, dancers, and acrobats at their disposal, especially in America. All three had been her assignments. All three had died mysteriously. All three are in Nastasha's file, kept sealed by Fury. Except Natasha knows they're there, of course. She doesn't know that she's unaware of what really happened to any of them.

He gets in her face, presses the stun gun against her belly. She stares straight ahead. She knows what's coming. Or thinks she does. He presses the switch again and her body goes rigid, her jaw clamps, and her fingers spasm as the current paralyzes her. He has turned the setting up a little. He hisses in her face, still in Russian.

"_Explain your failure!"_

"_I don't understand, Director,"_ she says, expressionlessly. _"The missions were carried out as ordered."_

"_NYET!"_ he thunders, blows smoke from the new cigarette he's just lit into her face. She doesn't move.

He shatters new walls now, but these are ones he's glad to break. He drags a description of every kill out of her in great detail. She relives each one, and her eyes never waver from his face, and never waver in their hatred. Once she obeys, he shoves pictures in her face, and reports from other agents. Ivanova, visited in confession by a grieving young widow, to whom he offered counseling. Once safe in the privacy of his office, the bereft young woman pulled a gun from her purse, pointed it at his face. He went to his knees, told her he forgave her, and began to pray. She stared into his face for several long moments, put her gun back in her purse, and left the building. He electrocutes her again as he screams at her for her failure, shows her the report from the next agent sent, who had not failed. Prenko, who was supposed to be in his shop alone just after closing the night the girl with car trouble knocked on his door. His two youngest boys, 4 and 6, watch with big eyes when their father lets her in, agrees to let her use the phone. They're sick with chicken pox. He's caring for them while his wife goes to work her third shift job in the shoe factory. He places his hands on their heads, love and pride on his face, when he tells her how good they've been. How uncomplaining. She uses the phone, and leaves. Three days later, Prenko is hit by a truck on his way home from work. Davidovich, visited in her dressing room by the new girl, the latest addition to the troupe. She's so young, and she hasn't the money to buy new dancing shoes, and Davidovich is kind to her, spends time with her, lets the young dancer befriend her. They shop together. Davidovich takes young Natalia out to eat, practices the numbers with her. Confides in her. Soon after, Davidovich vanishes. She is assumed dead. Natalia leaves the dance troupe and returns to the organization. She is greeted by torment, and interrogation. Clint shoves the picture in her face. It is Lena Davidovich, dancing in a little-known troupe in Boston. She goes by the name of Elaine Davidson now. He backhands Natasha across the face. Failure. Unacceptable. Traitor. He sees the memories of the subsequent torture in her eyes, as she licks blood from her lips. Her failures were replaced with memories of compliance, with the memories of killing those three innocent people. They intend for her to be their greatest creation once she is perfected. She cannot be allowed to recall that she ever rebelled.

He orders her to stand, not to move. She obeys. She's a good soldier. Only now she knows she hasn't always been. She hates him, seeing Dubrovsky, but since he feels he deserves the hate, he imagines she sees him instead. He steps out of the room, walks into another. Leans over an abandoned trash can and vomits bile into it.

Another set of memories, of experiences he makes her relive in order to show her the truth behind them. Three kills, forced upon her before the memory alteration. He walks her through them, makes her describe what happens. She stands before a young man. Her legs are shaking. Scabs dot her lips, her arms and legs. The young man is a school teacher. He has done nothing, not even to offend the allies of those who control her. He's a complete innocent. His daughter is behind him, screaming in the arms of one of her handlers, a gun pressed to her head. Him, or the child. She chooses him, and blows his brains out while the little girl sobs and begs. He is punishment for Ivanovich. A young prostitute, barely old enough to be called a woman, turned to the streets because there is not enough food at home. She longs to meet a nice man who will take her away from the life she hates. Instead, Natasha, a gun to her head, strangles the girl with a wire garotte, watching life slide out of her wide brown eyes as her heels drum against the floor and her fingernails claw uselessly at her own throat. She had never harmed anyone in her life. Her death is pointless. Payback for Prenko. Then, finally, the man. He owns a small restaurant. His borscht is some of the best in his small village. His family is held at gunpoint, forced to watch while she slits his throat, because she can kill him or see them slaughtered. She thinks she's finished, lets the knife fall from numbed fingers. Then they make her kill the mother too. Her price for Davidovich.

She doesn't understand why she must relive these, the three kills she cannot ever erase. These are the kills that wash her file with red. She's allowed to remember them, but with the minor alteration in memory that makes her think she killed them willingly. He shows her that she didn't, sees her pale and horrified as she remembers their children screaming, remembers the young whore's feeble struggles and the feel of the gun barrel solid and inexorable against her own skull. She's trembling.

He shows her more. Reveals the rest of the data Stark uncovered on those kills. That the school teacher was really a drug dealer, working for one of her "teachers." He had been caught skimming profits. They find it expedient to use his death to teach her a lesson. His screaming daughter is really one of the other girls from the program. The harmless prostitute, who helped lure girls "like herself" with promises of kind men who would marry them, or help them find jobs. The girls she brings vanish into the holds of cargo ships bound for other countries, and are sold into slavery, while the prostitute lives in a luxury flat and eats imported chocolate and shoots pure heroin into her veins like it's vitamins. She's getting too sloppy to do the job well anymore. Her drug addiction is a problem. She has no interest in trying to clean up. She's begun selling some of the girls herself rather than turning them over, so she can buy more. She's a liability. The loving couple who ran the restaurant, were in actuality laundering money for an important man, who was being cultivated by the organization. They started to keep a little too much for themselves, investing it in gold and gemstones, acquiring new passports and visas for themselves but not their children. They tried to run with their final shipment of dirty money, but were apprehended in time. Their children were not even present when Natasha sliced their throats. All three kills, ones she's carried around all these years as red marks she can't erase, are planted memories. She is weeping now, as only a young woman, barely more than a child, can weep when her life is laid in ruins at her feet. Snot smears her lip and chin, mixed with blood from where he hit her. Where Dubrovsky hit her. Who the fuck is he kidding. He hit her. He knows it, and she's going to know it too in a second.

He leaves her with this knowledge, orders her to remember it all, and brings her out, for the final time. She stumbles back from him, panting.

"Tasha," he says earnestly. "You never killed an innocent person. Never. Do you hear me?"

She holds her hand out, but it doesn't beckon, it keeps him at bay. She falls to one knee, wipes her face with the back of her hand. He takes a hesitant step towards her.

"Don't touch me!" she says harshly. He puts his hands in his pockets, fists clenched. He speaks quietly.

"Natasha, I am so, so sorry. I know I hurt you. I wanted so bad for you to know that none of what happened to you was your fault. Even when they tortured you, you defied them. You didn't do the things they made you think they did. They used hypnosis and brainwashing to make you remember and believe only the things they wanted you to. Their version of truth. The only real assassinations in your file are criminals, other spies, military targets. Maybe not all of them deserved death, but none of them were innocents. You were never what they made you believe. Tasha…there's no red in your file. And.." he chokes on the words, but he gets them out. "Shostakov…"

Her eyes snap to his face.

"What about him," she grits through clenched teeth.

"He didn't die in a plane crash like they told you. He didn't die at all. They faked his death because your assignment was over. He's an agent, has been since that day. His codename is Red Guardian."

She climbs slowly to her feet. She won't look at him. He stands there, shaking with loss. There is no emotion on her face. He's seen her look like this before. But only when she's on a mission, when there is someone she needs to kill, when blood and battle loom. She glances at him, but in her eyes there is no acknowledgement. She is a stranger. She walks to the door.

"Natasha…" he whispers, one hand lifted towards her in entreaty.

"Leave me alone, Clint," she says in an empty voice. "Don't touch me, don't talk to me. Find your own way back."

She walks out, leaving the door open. He hears the outer door open on its rusty hinges, then the helijet starts, warms up, takes off. Flies away.

He sits for a long time on the floor of the classroom. Then he changes back into his own clothes, piles up all the things he has used in the center of the floor, and burns them. He stands and watches them. The heat from the flames cannot touch the ice encasing his heart. He calls a cab. He can't bear the thought of seeing someone he knows right now. He can't bear the thought of being seen.

She's been gone for two weeks. Fury corners him in the gym where he's working his body into shaking exhaustion in hopes of being able to sleep.

"Do you know where she is?" Fury demands.

"Nope," he grunts, heaving the barbell into its holder with a clang.

"Is there something I need to know about?" Fury's pissed, and not in the funny way he's always pissed because dealing with all of them is like dealing with unruly, hyperactive nine year olds most of the time. He's pissed because he's worried, and doesn't want to show it.

"Maybe, but only if she decides to tell you."

He gets up from the bench, wipes his face with a towel, and walks out.

He spends a lot of time on the roof of Stark tower. Tony still hasn't had the letters replaced. All that remains is the big A. Coulson thinks this means he's become a team player. Barton thinks it's because he likes the illusion that he owns the Avengers, along with every fucking thing else. He hasn't told Coulson this. They're all a little more careful with Coulson than they used to be, since he died. Thor says the Son of Coul was allowed to return to fight the good fight because his request to do so was admired by the Allfather, who had offered him a place in Valhalla due to him having died a warrior's death. Clint doesn't know what to think about this, but it's undeniable that a few days after the battle, Coulson just showed back up for work one day like nothing had happened. The memory of the look on Fury's face is a priceless one. He doesn't smile about it as he stares at the lights of the city below him. The wind up this high is vicious. His hair is overdue for cutting, and whips at his face. He doesn't notice. It would be so easy, he thinks, to just let the wind take him. To dive one time like the hawk he's named for, and that would be it. He knows he won't do this. He still has a job to do, and he'll keep doing it. But he finds himself thinking things like that, as he perches on the edge and stares out. He thinks them almost impassively. It isn't despair. He's too numb for that. He knows that despite how he told himself she wouldn't be able to forgive what he'd done, he'd still hoped she would. That she would thank him, and forgive him, and they would be all right. Healed, together. The wind picks up. He turns his collar up and hunches his shoulders a little as it howls. It's so loud. Loud enough to drown the voice in his head that hammers at him day in and day out. Your fault. Your fault. Your fault.

It drowns out footsteps too.

"If this wind blows you off that ledge, I'm not jumping after you."

He jerks in startlement and falls backwards onto the smooth concrete of the roof's surface. His heart leaps up his throat and proceeds to strangle his tongue. All he can do it stare at her. She rolls her eyes.

"You look like an idiot."

With that, she drops gracelessly to her knees, straddling him. She takes his wrists in her hands, pressing them to the rough surface, hard. The concrete scrapes the back of his hands. He doesn't care. She looks into his face for a very long time. He doesn't dare speak. Has no idea what to say anyway. She does not waver in her gaze, yet somehow manages to divest herself of her pants and unfasten his. This process gives him the few microseconds he needs to go from stunned to fully roused and aching for her. She lifts up, tilts her hips, and lowers herself down, taking him in. She's wet and hot and hungry and she's home. She begins to ride him slowly, rocking, rising and sinking, never taking her eyes from his. His brain is reeling. He wonders if he may be dreaming, hopes he never wakes. Her pussy is like a velvet fist clenching his cock in a vise. His hips rise to meet her and she sucks in a breath. She lets go of his wrists and he grasps her by the waist, lifting her up so he can hammer up into her as hard and deep as he can. She groans softly, and holds herself there on her knees. He's sucking in huge gasping breaths, and it feels like the first breaths he's taken in two weeks. His skin feels like it's on fire. She leans forward, leans down to him, oh sweet merciful lord, she kisses him. Her lips and teeth and tongue are water in the desert he's lived in since he watched her walk away. She sits back up, riding and watching him. He reaches to where their bodies join, finds her clit with his thumb and rubs. She throws her head back at the sensation, moaning softly.

"Does..._oh god_… does this mean you forgive me?" he gasps.

"Le…_unnnhh_…less talking, Barton. More fucking," she pants.

He sits up, wraps one arm around her back, fists his other hand in her hair, tugs her head back so he can bite her collarbone, her throat, licking and tasting the salt of her skin, making hungry noises in the back of his throat. His balls are so tight he thinks he may die, but he won't come until she does. Fuck if he will. She wraps her legs around his waist and rocks against him, her arms around his shoulders, hanging on, using him as leverage to pull herself against him harder. He growls against her skin, needing this, needing her, so badly he thinks his heart may pound its way right out of his chest. She's whispering something in Russian as he feels her start to come, feels the inner walls of her pussy quiver, ripple, and then clench down on him like a fucking steel trap.

"_Vse. Vsegda. Vse moe zavtra. Vy vsegda …prinadlezhat… mne."_ (Everything. Always. All my tomorrows. You have always…owned me…too.)

She takes him over the edge with her, and he finds he can fly after all.


	5. Light the Dark

**Light the Dark**

*This is probably going to bring this series on Clint and Tasha to a close, at least for now, as I move on to writing stories for other members of the team. If you have not done so, please visit my profile and vote in the poll there. I hope you've enjoyed reading this as much as I've enjoyed writing it. I'm sure to include them in other stories, and I may have more to tell about them someday soon, but for now they're going to take a little break and have lots of kinky PRIVATE sex and just enjoy each other. Thanks much for all your input. Oh and in case it isn't obvious, rather than look up lots of Russian words, I have put the parts where someone is speaking Russian in italics. Enjoy!*

He's a man of few words most of the time. Since talking about her fucking feelings lands somewhere on her list of favorite things in between "elective oral surgery" and "evisceration by spoon," this suits her down to the ground. They communicate just fine, thanks. Often violently. Often carnally. Mostly the line between the two blurs. Which ok, also suits her. There have been men who thought they got her, thought they understood her, knew her. Some of them are dead. Some of them have no memory of her anymore. None of them were right. She has always had too many secrets, too many nightmares for anyone to know her.

Hawkeye knows her. Christ, the man knows her in ways she doesn't know herself. She'd struggled with that, with realizing how totally he had violated her, how naked-under-a-blazing-white-lightbulb she is in front of him, because of what he's done. For a while, she couldn't bear it. It wasn't the things he'd done to her under hypnosis. That had been…grueling. But compared to other days she's had, it was a walk in the fucking park. No, it was knowing that he knew EVERYTHING. She's never felt so exposed in her life, not even when she was eleven and her parents had just died and "Uncle Ivan" found her shivering in the streets of Stalingrad, crying. Hawkeye hasn't stripped her naked. He has stripped her to her soul. This is vulnerability she cannot bear. It's why she ran, why she left him in that abandoned orphanage and flew away. She hadn't known where she was going, hadn't cared that she was possibly stealing a multi-million dollar machine from Fury. She simply had to go.

In the end, after she had run for a while, then come to her senses and stopped behaving like a panicked deer, then tied off some of the loose ends he'd showed her…in the end she'd realized she had only one place to go.

She sleeps with him now, most nights. If the nightmares come, and they do because now she remembers so much, he wakes her with his whipcord and steel arms around her, and his voice in her ear. "Tasha. I've got you." He does. He always does.

Thus she sits back in the bed and watches him dressing through half-closed lids, enjoying the simple moments of meaningless things before they begin their days. They never know what these days will bring, and since he has ripped away the shadows before her eyes, these simple moments shine. He's beautiful to her. His body is compact, his hips and waist lean and agile, his arms and shoulders and back corded with muscle. He's incredibly strong for one not gifted with godlike powers. She will never be able to pull his bow. She isn't sure there are many who could. She knows Tony couldn't, not without the suit. She even thinks Rogers would have to strain a little. Clint's body is wrapped in more than muscle. Scars mar the surface of his skin. She maps them in her head as he bends to put on socks. The one on his left forearm was a knife fight in El Salvador. The twisted, ropy scar that curves across his ribcage under his left arm is from a broken tree limb during a botched parachute drop in Brazil. The round, puckered scars on his chest and arms are cigar burns, acquired in North Korea when she broke her ankle. Though he's wearing fatigue pants now (and if he doesn't button those top two buttons soon she's going to lick him, right there, and see how far he gets in putting on the rest of his damn clothes…bastard…he knows she likes him half-dressed) she knows there is a deep and terrifying scar on his right inner thigh where a bayonet nearly tore out his life, left his blood pumping from his femoral artery into the sand of Afghanistan. His back is crisscrossed with whip scars, also from North Korea…and, she admits, a few new ones she gave him. After having undergone a beating like that for torture, she has no idea how he can be such a greedy pain slut, but he is, and she's not going to poke at it too much because he's just so goddamn _hot _when his body is curved, trembling, in a tight bow of agony and need, and his grey eyes go ice blue with desperation and his voice, strained to an agonized whisper, begs her for mercy, begs her for more, tells her what he'll do when she unties him (and oh, he's fucking inventive). There are more scars, and she knows them all, and was with him when he got a lot of them. Since he still hasn't buttoned his pants, she reaches out and snags him by a belt loop as he walks past her, turns him to face the bed, and presses her mouth to the triangle of skin framed by his half-open fly, licks his warm flesh just below his belly button. His fingers drift through her hair. His head goes back, eyes closed, and he sucks in a breath. She hopes he doesn't have anything important on his schedule this morning. He's going to be very, very late.

When they lie, tangled and sated and warm, the bed a wreck and his clothes once again strewn about the room, she brings up the thing that's been niggling at her, the feelings she doesn't really want to discuss because she likes everything just fine the way it is, and the way they DON'T have to talk about every little thing.

"Do you want to come to Russia with me?" she asks, casually. He props himself up on one elbow, traces idle circles on her belly with his sensitive fingertips.

"Damn right I do," he says softly. She's a little startled at the tone in his voice, and looks up at his face. His jaw is set, the bones in his face seem to stand out like he is momentarily etched of glass. His eyes are cold rage. "I just thought you'd…already gone."

"I did," she admits, and feels his body sag a little at her words. "But not in the way you may be thinking."

"I thought you'd gone to pay off some old debts….and I thought you'd gone to….Shostakov."

Oh. That. She realizes suddenly that he's been living in dread of her not-so-late husband, that he expects her to leave him, to go back to what she had with Alexei.

"I already knew about Shostakov, Clint," she tells him, feeling a twinge of guilt that she didn't let him off this emotional tenterhook sooner.

"Wait, what now?"

"Fury told me about Shostakov years ago. I went looking for him then. He's still alive, I guess. I haven't heard anything different. Haven't heard anything at all, actually. When I found out he hadn't died in that plane crash, oh yeah, I went running to him. I was so goddamn young when they married me to him. Thought it was the love of the ages, that he was my sun, moon and stars, all that. Thank god I was older when I learned his death had been faked, because I was able to see him for what he is now. He's cold, in ways that make me look like June fucking Cleaver."

She has to stop talking and punch Barton in the stomach because he's laughing so hard he's going to pull them both out of the bed. He chokes, and subsides, rubbing his belly and glaring resentfully. He's not very convincing.

"Serve you right if I meet you at the door one day in a flowery dress and an apron and make you eat what I've cooked for you, asshat," she says comfortably.

"How about just the apron, and I'll eat you instead," he offers genially.

"You're a sick man," she says, laughing a little in spite of herself.

"Yep."

"Jesus, ok, shut up, I'm talking here."

"Yes Ma'am."

She rolls her eyes, but he makes her fall a little bit harder for him every time he says goofy shit like that. How he manages to take all of their absolute shit and turn it into simple, and lovely, and dirty and fun…she doesn't know. If she could bottle and sell him, she'd give Stark a run for his money.

"Anyway, I looked for him, and I found him, and realizing that he was a stranger, and a bastard, and that there is nothing left of the man I thought I loved when I was nineteen…well that sucked large, but since I'd already buried him once, it wasn't so hard to do it again. We'll probably end up facing each other over the barrels of our guns one day. I don't think either one of us will hesitate. But I'm faster."

He takes a breath and for a minute she prepares herself to kill him where he lies if he offers her sympathy over this. She doesn't want it, and it's going to piss her off. When she says she's buried him, she means it. It's not some tragic love story you cry over in a movie (well, she hears some people do, and she's pretty sure Thor cried when he watched Old Yeller with Steve, but ew. Just no.) and she _hates_ being pitied, will certainly not tolerate pity from Hawkeye!

"If you're not faster, I will be," he says easily.

Since she's already tensed to do him serious harm, this takes her aback for a minute, and she just stares at him.

"You thought I was gonna feel all sorry for your ass dintchya?" he says snarkliy.

"What I *think* is that you're a dick," she says irritably. He leans down, swirls his tongue in her belly button. She makes an entirely undignified noise and is then forced to yank his head back by his hair and stop him as viciously as possible from repeating such actions. When his eyes roll back in his head and he groans, this causes an abrupt shift in plans. Which delays the conversation even more.

He's lying beside her, boneless as a landed trout, and she can feel his heart pounding like a triphammer under her hand. Well, she thinks pensively, at least they're not going to have to worry about getting out of shape any time soon.

"So," he gasps. "Russia."

"I need to go back," she says quietly. If he'd been Fury, he'd be making pointed comments about the difference between want and need, and reminding her that it's her job to be objective.

There's a reason she's never fucked Fury.

Hawkeye accepts her words as a foregone conclusion.

"Okay. When?"

"Tomorrow."

She borrows one of Stark's jets, because this isn't sanctioned, and she won't risk losing one of the SHIELD helijets. That crazy guy in R&D, Pym or whatever his name is who designed them, is really proprietary about them. It's a little weird. And Stark can afford the loss, if it comes to that. She glances over at Barton beside her in the copilot's seat. It won't come to that.

There is something about the headsets that gives one a sense of privacy, even above and beyond being alone in an airplane together. Going Mach 2 and gaining speed. She loves to fly. There's a freedom to it she doesn't feel unless she's alone behind a stick, screaming across the sky like hell for leather. She's never felt it when there was another person along for the ride, and is surprised to feel it now. She realizes she feels the same when they're together. It's a little weird for her to realize it doesn't even matter who's calling the shots. They soar, the two of them, just like this. He's looking out the front windshield, but she can feel his attention on her. Hawkeye doesn't have to look at anything to be totally aware of it.

"You said you'd already been," he says. "What did you do?"

She faces forward also.

"Actually…first I went to Boston," she says quietly. A corner of his mouth lifts almost imperceptibly.

"Elaine Davidson?" he asks.

"Yeah."

"How is she?"

"She's fine. She remembers me. I wasn't sure she would."

"Of course she would. You saved her life."

"I…yes, ok, I did. But I didn't remember doing it. I only remembered killing her. So…I had to see her. We had coffee. She thanked me. She cried. She'd never known, all these years, what happened to me. She thought I was dead, because she never heard from me again. It was…weird. But good. I…well, I knew what you showed me was true, but I needed to see her. With my eyes. Hear her voice, shake her hand. She wouldn't let me. She hugged me!" She knows her voice sounds a little aggrieved, but she can't help it. She doesn't hug.

"Raving bitch," says Clint easily.

"I know, right? Anyway, it was…yeah it was good. She's happy, she dances, and she teaches little girls to dance. There were all these tiny ballerinas bouncing around like pinballs at her studio. Why would somebody's parent want to cram a kid who can barely walk into pink spandex and frothy crap and make them lurch around and tell all their friends how talented it is when watching it dance is like watching drunk bowling pins slam dance?"

He looks at her in fascination.

"Romanoff, your mind is a terrifying place," he says finally. "And I have no idea. But you can be damn sure I'm going to have nightmares about bowling pins in tutus trying to crush me to death now."

"Good. Anyway, after THAT I went to Russia. I thought I knew why I was going, when I left…"

"To burn them to the ground," he whispers.

"Yeah. But when I got there…then that wasn't why I was there after all. I looked for…for the shopkeeper's family, and the kids of those people who were laundering money…"

"The innocent ones," he murmurs.

"Right."

"Like you," he says.

"I don't think I qualify for that anymore, Barton," she says, trying to make it light. It comes out bitter.

"Fuck that, Tash," he says fiercely. "Just _fuck_ that. You are. In this, you are. Just like they are. No," he snarls when she opens her mouth to protest.

"They had their childhoods irrevocably changed. You had yours stolen. There are people to blame here. You don't get to put yourself in the same column, not anymore."

"I get that. Some dick who keeps wanting to get in my pants went to a lot of trouble to make sure I got it."

"I hear he keeps hoping to get in your pants on a daily basis."

"He's a freak like that," she agrees, and smiles. Just a little bit. She can't let him know how often he makes her want to grin like a loon at him. It would be terrible for his ego. "But no, I just meant I haven't been an innocent kid in a long time now. I just wanted to know what happened to them."

"And?"

"Prenko's family got out. They live in Austria now. Mrs. Prenko remarried 5 years ago. Her name is Werner now. Her husband's a banker. She was his secretary. Their kids went to school, grew up, got jobs. The oldest daughter's getting married soon. They're okay."

He smiles, and she sees he feels the same flush of relieved delight to know that these innocent victims of her past have moved on to better lives.

"And the launderers' kids?"

She sighs.

"They became wards of the state," she says. There is some bitterness there. "You'll know a little what that's like."

He nods. He does know. He and his brother lived in an orphanage for several years, until they ran away and literally joined the circus.

"It's worse in Russia," she says softly. "There are never enough funds. And it's not like not having enough funds in America, where it means crappy food and clothes that don't fit, and broken toys and lousy education. It means NO food and clothes that are mostly holes, and sharing a blanket with three other kids, and no toys and not learning now to read. Both places there's not anyone to hold you or care if you cry, but in Russia you do it in the dark, and the cold, and with an empty belly."

"Tasha…you don't have to tell me."

"No, it's okay." She sighs. "The youngest of the Slavsky kids died of tuberculosis two years after I killed his parents. The other three survived. The oldest ran away, joined a gang in one of the ghettos. He's in prison for stealing cars. The middle two remained wards of the state until they became adults, but they both got jobs. Crappy jobs, but they work, and they have crappy apartments, and one of them has a girlfriend. I…" she blushes, stares out the window.

"You helped them," he says softly.

"Yeah," she whispers. "I left ten thousand American dollars each with one of our agents in Russia with instructions to see it got to them and that it couldn't be traced. They'll have it by now. It's not enough, for what they went through, but in Russia, that's like a hundred grand to us." She feels defensive about this, feels annoyed that she does.

"It was good," he says firmly. "You did good. I'd have done the same."

She's silent for a long time, just flying, and he lets her be. This is one of the reasons she tolerates him. One of the reasons they've been partners so long. They don't have to try to fill the silence. She knows damn well she's not being honest with herself with words like "tolerate" and "partners." Fuck if she's gonna act all gone over him like a stupid kid. They've saved each other. Yippy fucking skippy. He's her goddamn hero. So what. Doesn't mean she's gonna fall down and kiss his feet. She doesn't even know why she's arguing with herself about it so ferociously, except that she has very recently had her entire world yanked out from under her. His fault, by the way, and who asked him to.

"So why are we going now?" he asks eventually.

"Can we not just be fucking going?" she snaps. He raises an eyebrow.

"Tasha, we're assassins. Would you go in without a briefing?"

Shit. Leave it to him to be reasonable. Tie a guy up, beat the shit out of him, sexually abuse him, what does he do? Does he shut her out of his life like any other normal, sane heterosexual guy should have done? Does he set about proving his manhood afterwards in such a way that turns him into a raging asshole so she can walk away without looking back? Does he avoid her like the plague for the rest of their lives like a not-crazy person should do? Does he try to kill her the second he's loose like any self-respecting spy OUGHT to try? No. Fucking no. He bleeds on the floor at her feet, makes her come so hard she can't stand up anymore, and THANKS her. And keeps doing it. The making her come thing, not the thanking her thing, because then she could have killed him in good conscience. And does he stay out of her blacked-out past like she clearly expects everyone to? No, fucking no he does not. He blasts through it like a claymore mine through packing peanuts and does THIS to her. Makes her look at him and want to just bite him all the damn time. And Jesus, in a GOOD way too! Not even in a "draw back a bleeding stump way." He makes her…fucking bastard makes her soft on him. And on top of that he's fucking reasonable. She has killed for fewer reasons than this. She really has. She sighs.

"Well shit Barton. Is it going to rock your world too hard if I tell you I don't know for sure?"

Both his eyebrows go up a little at this.

"Little bit," he says.

"I want to know where they are. If they're alive. And what they're doing now."

He doesn't ask who. He knows the names as well as she does. Petrovich. Dubrovsky. Rodchenko. The last was her handler, the one on the other end of the electricity that paralyzed and burned and made her piss herself and who did it again if she cried. She remembers them as they really were now. The kind, loving uncle who saw she got a superior education which brought her to the attention of her government…he'd murdered her parents and turned her over to a monster with a smile, then visited every time she was debriefed or her conditioning needed a little work. Oh, she remembers the shine in his watery blue eyes when she screamed, and recognizes lust for what it is. He never touched her, she was too valuable for that, but he got his rocks off plenty watching them hurt her. When she was twelve. She also remembers that he stopped coming once she hit seventeen. Just didn't do it for him anymore. Dr. Dubrovsky, the wise and gentle psychiatrist who had helped her through the trauma of her parents' deaths…he had brainwashed, hypnotized, drugged and tormented her for years, getting fat on the payroll of her handlers. He had known what was being done to her, with her, and he hadn't cared. Viktor Rodchenko, her proud teacher and mentor, who had tortured and beaten and driven her like a prized greyhound while she, believing she adored him, begged his forgiveness when she failed him, and knew she'd never be good enough.

She's fucking good enough now.

"Are things gonna get wet?" he asks. She recognizes there's a little eagerness in his voice. He hides it, but she knows him too well. He wants to kill them. Wants it badly. The funny thing is, she isn't sure it's that cut and dried for her.

"That's the part I'm not sure about," she admits reluctantly. She expects this to surprise him, for him to argue, tell her why they all need to die. He doesn't.

"Okay," he says. "I'll just follow your lead then. We'll find them."

"And then we'll see," she says.

"And then we'll see," he agrees.

Russia is different for him this time. It's certainly not his first trip. They've even been here together before, on more than one mission. He actually kind of likes it, she thinks. He even bothered to learn to speak the language a couple of years ago, which, since he's almost always just the eyes and ears…and final solution…on missions, he didn't have to do. Russia has been a disturbing place for her for a very long time. Before her memories were restored, she had thought it was because of her defection, and feeling like there were eyes on her all the time, every time she's had to come back since then. Now she knows it was because the weight of those memories was pressing down on her like unseen, smothering piles of wet wool. She is a little more able to appreciate it though his eyes this time around.

Russia is a little funny, in that Communism did its best to eradicate most signs of the proud history of its nation from before the revolution. So much of it is no older than that first Communist regime, under Lenin, less than a hundred years ago. And yet signs remain, a few churches and other buildings, some art, and most importantly, its history and legacy remains in the minds and hearts of its people. There is also still a great deal of paranoia remaining, despite the fact that Communism no longer grinds the people under the boot of its iron grip. Russia is a study in contradictions. Some of it is quite beautiful. Its people are at once both generous and suspicious. Its politzia and military are often confused by whether they are still supposed to drag people off in the night, never to be seen again, or to help old ladies cross the street and be a comforting presence.

They're not here to sightsee though. They book a room under one of their many false ID's and get to work. Somewhat to Natasha's dismay, they discover rather easily that Ivan Petrovich is dead. He died less than a year ago, which is why, she supposes, she hasn't heard about it yet. He was accidentally killed when his small boat capsized in a storm off the coast while he vacationed in Georgia. Since she knows Petrovich suffered from crippling seasickness, she finds this story dubious at best. He'd either outgrown his usefulness, or had made a mistake with a price too high for him to pay. Except with his life. She's not sorry he's dead. Feels nothing at all about it, in fact, except a twinge of disappointment that she doesn't get to look him in the eye and see the expression on his face when he realizes she remembers everything. She supposes it's poetic justice though. That the people he served are the ones who ended him, and that his death is as much of a lie as his life had been.

Dubrovsky, too, proves relatively easy to track down. He had never been an operative, and maintained a private practice outside the auspices of the organization she'd been created for. His name and personal information are matters of public record, such as they are in this country. Dr. Yuri Dubrovsky's current address is at a convalescent hospital outside Novgorod. It's a residential facility for the infirm and the incurably insane. It's far removed from the school's location (if indeed it still exists in any form anymore and if it's still in the same location) so she wonders if he has perhaps retired from the brainwashing gig.

They rent a horrible little black car that smokes and rattles and seems at any moment to be ready to up and die on them, but somehow they make it to Novgorod. The hospital is nicer than she'd expected, with decent lawns, and a garden, and patios where patients in wheelchairs and walkers sit or wobble about, attended by nurses and orderlies and visiting family members. There is security, but it's discreet, and the guards look competent rather than menacing. The receptionist at the front desk is friendly.

"_How may I help you?_" she asks in Russian.

"_I would like to see Dr. Yuri Dubrovsky,"_ she answers.

"_Are you a member of the family?"_

This strikes Natasha as a strange question.

"_No,"_ she replies. _"A patient." _The receptionist eyes her a little suspiciously.

"_I…am not sure of the appropriateness of your request to visit the doctor. He normally only receives family members," _she says hesitantly. People are generally not overtly rude to Natasha. She makes them nervous. She doesn't mind this, actually. The receptionist's behavior switches on a lightbulb in her head, and when she eyes Clint, she sees he's picked up on what's happened as well.

Dr. Dubrovsky isn't on staff here. He's a patient.

"_Please…" _says Clint, stepping forward and smiling disarmingly at the young woman, who smiles back. _"My wife was one of Dr. Dubrovsky's patients some years ago. He…well you see he really saved her life. We would not be here now, together, had it not been for him. When we heard what had happened, she couldn't bear the thought of not having a chance to thank him for what he did for her. May we see him? Please?"_

The girl smiles bigger, punches something up on the computer. She informs them the psychiatrist is in the garden at this hour, being taken for a walk by one of the orderlies, and that she doesn't see a problem with them paying him a visit. She warns them that the stroke almost completely paralyzed him, and that speech is extremely difficult for him, and as a result he seldom communicates, but that his cognitive function is still fine. He will recognize his old patient, they can be assured.

Oh good.

It isn't easy to convince the orderly, who has parked the old man' wheelchair in front of a small koi pond and is smoking a foul-smelling Russian cigarette some feet away, that they will be glad to return the doctor to his room for him when they conclude their visit. The orderly shrugs, as though it is of no consequence to him, and wanders off. Hawkeye takes the handles of the wheelchair and pushes it around the pond to a little copse of fruit trees, which will never bear fruit in Russia's colder climate, but which are nevertheless pretty. The trees screen them from view of the hospital. Natasha steps in front of Dubrovsky and looks down at him. He peers up at her in confusion, and she relishes the moment he recognizes her. The muscles of his face are mostly paralyzed too. He makes a grotesque-sounding noise of negation and alarm, and a shiny line of drool falls from his mouth to darken a spot on the shoulder of his gray sweater.

"Oh good," she says, in English, knowing full well he speaks it like a Native, and not wanting anyone who might wander by to understand her. No one does, but they might. Hawkeye keeps one eye on the nearby grounds, and one on Natasha and Dubrovsky. "You know who I am."

Dubrovsky's hands scrabble uselessly at the grips of his chair. He doesn't have the strength or coordination to grasp the wheels and try to run away, but it's clear he wants to. He makes a choking sound, and then, gutterally, rasps out _"Lamp Post,"_ in Russian. She sees Barton tense a little behind the chair. She realizes he's not sure her conditioning has actually been broken by the restoration of her memory. When her throat closes and her heart rate triples for a few seconds, she realizes she wasn't sure either. Except nothing happens. She remains solidly herself. A tiny smile quirks at the corner of her mouth.

"Ooops," she whispers. Clint leans down and hisses in his ear.

"She doesn't belong to you anymore, you bastard." His voice is both triumphant and so full of malice that he shocks her a little. Clint has always been a nearly emotionless killer. He has no objectivity on this one. It should alarm her, but it doesn't. He wants to kill them, for her. That's so sweet. And some guys just send flowers.

"I just wanted to come by and let you know that I remember all of it, Doctor," she says softly. "Everything you did to me, every hypnotic suggestion, every implanted memory, every drug you pumped into me. I came here to kill you, but I'm not going to. You're nothing now. Just a useless shell of a man who shits and pisses himself every day and has to have his diapers changed, who can't feed himself or dress himself, who can't fight or flee or fuck, and you can never hurt me or anyone else, ever again. I'm really okay with that. Well…except I think I'll inform my contacts in your government that the price for my silence is to have you stripped of your degrees and every honor you ever earned, and to have you discredited and your license to practice medicine revoked. Not that you can, of course, but I want you disgraced. I'll have it too. " She will, and easily. She knows people, and SHIELD knows even more people, and none of those people will want the threat of her revealing even a hint of what was done to her by their government to reach the public. All those interviews they're still doing, you know. He's finished. She finds this pleases her more than simply killing him would have.

He's turned an interesting shade of purple, and spittle flies from his mouth as he tries ineffectually to curse at her. She stands and watches impassively while he rages. Then she nods to Hawkeye and they walk away. Except Barton pauses, puts a hand on her arm, and turns back.

"Agent Romanoff is a better person than I am, Dr. Dubrovsky," he says. She has never heard that particular tone of ice in his voice before. "She's content to let you live, because you're no threat to anyone anymore. In fact, you're nothing. I find I'm just not as forgiving."

He reaches in the sleeve of the jacket he's wearing, and pulls out an arrow. She raises her eyebrows. She'd missed it. Nerves over confronting her torturer, she supposes. Still, it's sloppy of her.

"Do you see this arrow, Doctor?" says Clint in a low voice. "It has your name on it. See, right here? Dubrovsky." He slaps the side of Dobrovsky's face with the shaft. There may be a lot of nerve damage, but he feels it, she can tell. He makes a small fear sound. "One day, it's coming for you. You'll never know when. Could be tonight, could be tomorrow. Could be next week, or next year. I just want you to know, that every bite of food that crosses your lips could be your last. Every corner you turn, every window you pass, every walk in the park…it might be waiting. She may be able to walk away, Dubrovsky. But I'll come for you. Remember that." He stands, runs the feathers of the flight through his fingers, kisses the tip of the arrow's head, and salutes Dubrovsky with it. Then he turns, takes her hand, and they walk away. The acrid smell of urine fills the air. The doctor has pissed himself in fear. Barton is smiling.

"You can be one scary motherfucker, you know that?" she asks as they get in the crappy little car.

"Yup," he says cheerfully.

"Are you really going to come for him?" she asks curiously. She doesn't know if she'll try to talk him out of it or not.

"Nope," he says, just as cheerfully. "But he thinks I will. And he'll think about it every day for the rest of his life. I wanted more than his reputation to be ruined. This is good."

She looks at him admiringly.

"It was good. I almost believed you," she says sincerely. He grins fiercely.

"The important thing is…he believed me."

They drive away. She doesn't look back.

Yevgeny Rodchenko is a very hard man to find. They have to pull a lot of strings, call in a few favors, phone Tony in America and harass him into hacking some records, which he does with enthusiasm he hides behind annoyance. They're interrupting important work for this bullshit, don't they know that. Clint offers to bring him 5 ounces of beluga caviar, fresh. Natasha offers not to kill him. He finds these deals acceptable. They get their data.

Rodchenko goes by the name Yeltsin now. His current cover is as the manager of a bank in Minsk. All the layers of secrecy convince her that he's very much still in the game. They fly the helijet to Minsk, and go into surveillance mode. It isn't easy. Rodchenko was more paranoid than most back when paranoia was an art form in Communist Russia. He hasn't lost his flair for it. He uses his cover as an affluent banker to account for his reclusive and secretive habits, apparently. If this is, indeed, their man. He looks qute a bit different from how she remembers him. She can't be sure they even have the right guy, because he almost never goes out in public. He enters and exits his home through an interior garage. He enters and exits the bank through secured underground parking. Someone else shops for him. They watch for four days and are unable to get close enough for Natasha to even confirm that they have the right man. If it is him, and he's living his life this secretively, then it means he's still in the game. She decides that unlike Dubrovsky, Rodchenko needs to die. If he's still on the inside, then he is still doing to other children what was done to her. This can't be allowed. Barton agrees. But God damn it, she won't risk killing an innocent man, so a clean shot from afar isn't going to do, not until she finds a way to look in his eyes and be certain it's him. She thinks it is, but there are plenty of paranoid people in Russia, and his reclusive habits aren't enough to condemn him, on the off chance that Alexsandr Yeltsin is an innocent (if slightly crazy) man. And, she admits to herself, she wants him to know who it is that's killing him, if she's right. She wants him to see her, and know her, and know she remembers.

They try to make an appointment to see the bank manager about a loan, and are told Mr. Yeltsin is not taking appointments. They try getting a kid with a package to ring his doorbell and insist he has to have a signature when a housekeeper answers. She takes the form and disappears inside, returning with the signature. They visit the bank a few times, hoping to catch him out of his office and interacting with customers or employees. They're unsuccessful.

She doesn't mind the delay. Much. The nights in their hotel room with Clint are diverting enough to take her mind off the frustration of not being able to pin down Yeltsin. They're watching bad Russian television (truthfully, most of it is bad) and eating blinis from a corner café with their fingers. Barton's chin is resting on her ass.

"I think I may have an idea," he says. She licks sweet cream cheese filling off her fingers and looks over her shoulder at him.

"What's that?"

"You're not bad with security systems, right?"

Thus it is that they find themselves locked in a bank vault a few minutes after 5 p.m. the next day. The bank's security cameras have a number of failsafes built in so that if they go offline for more than a few seconds, the police will be notified. The failsafes even have redundancies. It's a good system. But she'd been able to insert a flare of static for a few seconds, long enough for them to slip down a hallway and into the vault without being caught on camera. It had been just a few minutes before closing time, and they'd noticed that it wasn't uncommon for one of the clerks or tellers to pull the vault door closed near close of business. It was to be assumed that Yeltsin checked it before he left for the day, but fortunately for them, it was a common enough occurrence for someone else to have shut it that the door being shut won't raise and red flags. Hawkeye's idea was brilliant in its simplicity. Yeltsin arrived for work at least a half hour before everyone each day, and he was the one who opened the vault. The interior of the vault is the only place in the bank that has no security cameras. All they have to do is wait for him to open it in the morning and they will be face to face with their target. Or an innocent but paranoid stranger. She doesn't know what they're going to do if it isn't Rodchenko. Call Fury and have him pull some strings to avoid an international incident, probably. That will make him happy.

It's a great plan. All they have to do it wait fourteen and a half hours for the door to open in the morning. Hawkeye is lying on the floor with his head on his backpack. His eyes are closed. He looks relaxed in the dim light given off by the lumastick they've stuck in its holder like a candle. Content, even. The vault is small, probably no more than 10x10 feet. She paces. Five steps, corner, turn. Five steps, corner, turn. Five steps, corner…she stops to avoid stepping on Barton. What the hell is he doing anyway? Taking a fucking nap? She goes back the other way. Five steps, corner, turn…

"Tasha."

…Five steps, corner….

"Tasha."

….turn. Five step…

"TASHA!"

His hand closes on her ankle. She's not ready for it and stumbles. She falls hard on her hands and knees. She twists her foot free of his grasp, scissors her legs around his neck, flips him, and comes down on top of him heavily, her forearm pressed against his throat and her other hand drawn back in a fist.

"Tasha," he chokes softly. She lets go of him, leaps backwards and stands glaring at him, rubbing her arms. Bastard shouldn't have surprised her like that is all. He sits up, rubbing his throat a little. Coughs, looks up at her with a rueful smile.

"You're really having a hard time with this, aren't you?" he asks.

"No," she says defensively. "I'm just bored is all."

"Tash. I've seen you sit in one place for eight hours on end waiting for a mark to be in the right place. Without moving a muscle. If I'd known you were claustrophobic, I'd never have suggested this. We'd have figured something else out."

"I'm not claustrophobic. I've been in spaces smaller than this before. I just…" She hates it that there's no windows, no ventilation shaft, and they cannot open the door, no matter what they try. They don't have any plastic explosives. Hawkeye's arrows would only explode INSIDE the vault and hurt them, not the door. They're not designed for that. It cannot be picked, or overridden. It's a little bit like being buried alive.

"You can't get out," he murmurs. He's looking at her thoughtfully. She knows the look. It's the one that says he's thinking something dirty. What the hell, she thinks. No cameras, nobody to disturb them for over 14 hours, it's a great way to take her mind off being trapped like a fucking rat. And he never minds when she needs to work some frustrations out on him. His eyes take on a predatory gleam as he steps close, and his hand flashes out, fists in her hair. What the fuck? No, this isn't part of the plan. What the hell is he thinking? He _knows_ her. He has to know the way she's feeling, what she needs right now, and it's control. He always gives it up to her so easily. Knows instinctively when she needs it. She snarls at him when he leans close, starts to protest, but he cuts her off with his mouth. And does he give her the chance to bite him like she's fucking well gonna if he doesn't stop this? No, he does not. His lips brush hers, a whisper-soft tease, and his tongue barely tickles her mouth, lapping at her almost daintily like a kitten at a saucer of cream. It's maddening, quite exclusive of the fact that it has lust coiling hard in her belly like a fist in silk. Jesus. He kisses her like this for what seems like an hour but is probably only a few minutes, until she's disturbingly close to making a noise that sounds a lot like a whimper. He forces her head to the side, tugging backwards on her hair, and his body crowds her, bumping against her, so that she is forced to give way or fall, until her back hits the wall of the vault. His hand in her hair doesn't let go, despite the fact that she tugs against him, and she knows he can see she's getting seriously annoyed.

"Barton," she snarls warningly.

"Shut up, Tasha," he says, his voice like the crack of a whip. Her eyes widen in surprise. "You just shut your fucking mouth, and you listen to me."

She's too surprised by the menace in his tone to say anything in response, and gapes at him. He leans in close, his breath tickling the skin of her throat, his voice low and rumbling in her ear.

"Do you think I'm stupid?" he asks her silkily.

"What?"

His fist in her hair twists painfully.

"Do you?" he growls.

"No, of course not, don't be an asshole," she says hotly. He's going to start pissing her off in a minute. Never mind the fact that she can feel her panties getting wet. Completely irrelevant.

"Then how could you think I've never noticed that you're holding back on me?"

"Huh?" The observation completely baffles her. What the hell is he talking about?

"Who holds the reins in this relationship? And don't mouth off to me about equality and shit. I don't mean in the day to day. You're my fucking partner in everything, Tash. I mean in one thing. Who holds the reins in bed, Tasha?"

"It depends," she says, confused. "Whoever…fuck Barton, whoever wants to or needs to that day, I guess. We take turns, you know that."

"Bullshit," he spits, and bangs her head against the wall a little bit. It doesn't hurt, but it startles the shit out of her. "Bull. Shit. YOU do."

"That's not true," she protests, really lost now. "I let you top me all the time."

"Do you really?" he whispers. "Can you answer me honestly, or are you lying to yourself too? When have you let go of your control Tasha? When have you let me really have you, all of you? And," he continues, his mouth so close to her throat that she feels his teeth graze her skin and she shivers. "I do not mean when you're my bad little girl. I mean YOU. When, Tasha?"

Well hell. She hadn't thought he'd noticed. She's certainly been abandoned enough, enthusiastic enough, in bed with him that he _shouldn't_ have been able to tell. But he's right. There's always some part of herself she holds back from him, some little kernel she keeps protected. It isn't a big deal. It's not like they don't both enjoy what they do. Every deliciously naughty nasty bit of it. What the fuck does he have to complain about anyway? She doesn't bother to deny it, she just looks at him and shakes her head as much as she can when he's holding it FUCKING HOSTAGE and she's going to put a stop to that noise any second now. Any damn se…oh God, she moans when he rams his knee between her thighs and presses against her center. She makes a strangled noise and grinds her hips down hard against him. The pressure is delicious, but it isn't enough. His free hand encircles her throat, strokes gently, applying no pressure.

"I won't have it, Tasha," he whispers, and she shivers. "It ends now. I'm going to make you surrender to me. Here. Now. Tonight. You can't run. The only way you can stop it is to damage me bad enough that I can't keep going. If you are prepared to do that, then you better do it, because that is the ONLY way I'm going to stop. You'll give yourself to me, Tash. All of you. I'm going to make you beg, and whimper, and cry for it. It's going to be here and now, and do you know why?"

"No," she gasps, and her brain is reeling because she's honestly trying to decide if she can break his wrist right now. She knows she's capable, she's trying to decide if she _can._

"Here and now, Tash," he breathes. "Because…baby…you're completely safe."

Wait, what? She's locked in an inescapable vault with a crazy man and she's _safe? _This is clearly some definition of the word she's unfamiliar with. She looks at him incredulously and he laughs. He takes his hand out of her hair and wraps his arms around her, pulling her close to him.

"Yes, I mean it. Think about this, Tash. Ok it's true that we can't get out. But for probably the first time since the night your parents died…_nothing can hurt you._"

Well, that's a startling fucking realization, isn't it? She goes very still in his arms. And despite the fact that the way they love each other often leaves bruises, she knows he will never hurt her. And they are the only ones in this room. They can't get out, which has been eating at her, but all of a sudden he's made her realize that nothing can get IN either. Not even if Rudchenko realizes he forgot something at the bank and comes back in the night. Because the safe is on a timer and it simply can't be opened until morning.

"Well I'll be damned," she says softly. This makes him laugh some more. He pulls back a little and looks in her eyes. The humor still dances there, but he is intent, and he's serious.

"Try, Tasha," he says quietly. "For me."

She says the only thing she can possibly say under these circumstances.

"Yes."

He lets go of her and steps away, backs up until he leans on the opposite wall. Crosses his arms and one ankle over the other one, leaning back casually. He studies her. She takes a step towards him and he points one finger at her.

"Ah ah…I don't remember telling you to move," he says chidingly. She fists her hands at her sides, uncertain and not liking it one little bit. "Now…take off your clothes," he orders, his face and voice expressionless. She isn't shy, is perfectly comfortable with her body, and god knows he's seen her naked too many times to count (some of them long before they started boning each other like weasels), but there is something unsettling about taking off her clothes by the strange greenish light of the lumastick, while he stares impassively at her and remains fully clothed. When she's naked, she stands with her hands at her sides and refuses to clench her fists or do anything else to show him how strangely vulnerable this makes her feel. He just stares at her, silently, his eyes huge dark hollows in his face due to shadows cast by the 'stick. They glitter faintly when he blinks.

"You're hating this, aren't you?" he finally says, sly humor in his voice.

"I'm good," she says calmly. "We can stand here all night if you want."

"If I want…if I want…" murmurs thoughtfully. "Oh it's ALL going to be about what I want, Tasha. What I want now is for you to lie down on the floor, on your back."

Ohhhkay, she thinks. Getting to the point awfully fast. But whatever. She's pretty damn horny now anyway. She lays down obediently. The floor is carpeted in that universal cheap berber carpet you find in every office in the world. It's scratchy under her skin. He takes a few steps towards her until he's just outside of arm's reach and crouches down on his heels, looking at her.

"Touch yourself," he whispers.

"What?"

"I said," he growls, and he leans forward and one of those steely arms snakes out and pinches her on the nipple, hard. She hisses through her teeth when the sharp pain lances into her belly. It shocks her, because it really hurts, and yet it feels good too. "Touch yourself. You will take your hands and you will reach down between those amazing legs and you will play with your pussy while I watch you. Do it now."

Flushing a little, she obeys him, and her fingers fumble a little. She runs her pointer finger up her slit, feeling the moisture there seeping out, and brushes her clit. It's already swollen. She sighs. But damn, this feels weird. She wishes he wouldn't just crouch there like a damn gargoyle, staring at her. Still, if this is how he wants to play, fine. She strokes herself gently, sighs softly as the pleasure of it hums in her blood.

"No," he whispers. "You can do better than that, Tash. I want you to masturbate like you do when you're alone, when no one can see you."

Well Jesus, nothing embarrassing about THAT at all. She squirms a little, but after all, this is Clint. They've certainly done weirder things. Besides, if she's touching herself, she's in control, and though she can't see how it gets him what he wants, it doesn't make her feel too threatened, once she thinks about it. She closes her eyes, decides to just sort of pretend he's not staring at her, and does what he asks. With one hand, she uses her fingers to spread herself open. She slides her first two fingers of her free hand down the slippery flesh of her own sex and slides them inside her. She hums softly, tonelessly, at the feeling, then slides them back out and begins to rub her clit up and down. So nice.

"Tell me what you think about, Tasha," he says quietly, but there is steel in his voice that tells her he will not be denied.

"You," she whispers, still rubbing. "I think about you."

"That's a cop-out," he snaps. Before she even has time to open her eyes, he has flipped her over onto her stomach and he spanks her, hard and fast, with his hand. She's still drawing breath to yelp from the first hard spank when he's smacked her a dozen times and flipped her back over again, ordering her to continue. She can feel the outline of every one of his fingers branded into her ass. It throbs. Good lord but he's strong. She blinks back tears, not that she's ready to cry, but just because her eyes are fucking watering it stung so much and startled her so badly. Badly disconcerted, she fumbles as she reaches back down between her legs. She's even wetter than before now, and she presses her bottom into the rough carpet a little as she continues.

"Tell me what you think, Tasha…the truth," he says harshly. This mortifies her, because though there are things they don't tell each other, they're as honest with each other as they can be, and she knows she owes it to him to be honest now. But what she thinks, in the dark quiet of her own mind, when they are apart and she yearns for him, and her fingers strum pleasure from her own body because she can't wait…those things are private. And embarrassing. She turns her face away from him, keeps her eyes closed, but she does as he's asking.

"I…I'm alone in a dark room. I'm naked, and blindfolded. I'm…my hands are tied, above my head. I'm…"

"Are you afraid?" he whispers.

"Yes…"

"What happens?"

"I hear a door…it opens and closes. F…footsteps. I feel his body heat…he walk around me…close. I can hear him breathe. He…he says my name…"

"Taaasshhhhaaa," Clint whispers, and it's so exactly like in her fantasy that she shivers.

"It…it's your voice," she gasps.

"Does that make you stop being afraid?"

"N..oh..no," she sighs. "You touch me, just a little, just…your fingertips…all over my body, and it makes me shiver. You whisper…in my ear…how bad I've been…and I pull on the ropes but I can't get free. I try to fight but you've done something to me, so I can't. You…you have a whip…and you rub it on my body…let me feel the leather. You hold it under my nose so I can smell it. You…you tell me how much it will hurt…"

"It will," he whispers. "Oh Tasha…it will hurt so much."

"God," she gasps, and her pussy clenches hard. "You…you step back, and I hear it…you crack it, in the air, all around me, and I can't see where it is. And then…then you whip me with it..not like a torturer…like….not on my back…"

"I punish you with it like a bad girl, not a spy, not an enemy," he says, his voice so rich and soft.

"Yes. God. Oh fuck…you use it on my ass, on the backs of my legs…and…oh…"

"And it hurtsss," he hisses.

"So much," she pants, her finger rubbing furiously on her clit, which feels as though it will burst. His voice in her ears added to the fantasy in her head is driving her mad. She doesn't turn her face away anymore. She looks at him, and his eyes are hot and fierce on her face and flicking down her body. She throws her head back, closes her eyes again, continues.

"You…you don't stop…and it…it…the tip of the whip…it slips between my legs…and between my cheeks…"

He makes a low sound in his chest. "Does it hurt," he breathes, "when it snaps on your poor sweet little pussy and your poor tight little asshole?"

"Jesus Clint," she gasps. "God…yes…hurts…so much…"

"Do you scream?"

"Yes," she says harshly, teeth clenched. "I…I beg…and I cry…"

"I like that," he growls.

Her pussy is throbbing, aching. She wants to reach for him, pull him to her, take him inside, but she knows he won't let her. She moans softly.

"Y…you do…and while I'm crying…you unfasten your pants…and you push me forward and let the rope out…so I'm bent over…and you ki…kick my legs open…and you ram into me…and I'm sore from the whip…and it hurts…"

Abruptly, taking her completely by surprise because she didn't hear him move, she feels two of his finger spear into her drenched cunt. She cries out in shock and then whimpers when he presses them hard up inside her, the force of his powerful shoulder behind it as he finger fucks her cruelly. She whines and gasps. His other hand spanks hard on the inside of her thigh, making her cry out again in shock and pain.

"Did I tell you to stop talking?" he snarls.

"I'm sorry," she pants. She's dazed, aching, lusting hideously for him, and positively shaking with the welter of emotions she feels. The tender skin on the inside of her thighs burns where he spanks, and his fingers inside her are fucking fantastic and she never wants him to stop, can feel her inner muscles clenching down on them like she will never let go, and she's dizzy. And god, she's about to come so hard she may shake this fucking place down around their ears.

"Y..you fuck me…so hard…and I scream…and…god…ohh…you like it. You like me screaming for you…and…"

"And?" he prompts when she hesitates.

"Ah…after a little while….you take your dick out of…of my pussy…and you p…press it up against my…"

"It's going up that tight little asshole now," he says, his voice is steely and cold.

"No," she gasps. "No please…."

"Is that when you come, Tasha?" he purrs. "When I spear your quivering, tight, punished little asshole with my cock?"

She makes a strangled sound and her thighs shake with effort as she swirls her finger on her clit, feels her body drawing tight as release approaches.

"Yes," she gasps, "Oh god, yes…"

"Then we'll have to try it sometime," he says, and he pulls his fingers out of her, and grabs her wrists and yanks them away from her aching pussy. She moans, an anguished sound of frustration. God, she's so fucking close! But fuck if she's going to let him beat her this easy. She pulls herself together, ignoring the small voice in her head that's trying to tell her the only person she's beating by not letting him all the way in is herself. It's a much bigger struggle than it should be, but she calms her breathing, quiets her rampaging pulse, and waits.

He ignores her self-defeating display of self-control and rolls to his feet. He stands above her, looking down, unapologetically staring at her nakedness for several seconds. She stares back, impassively. He won't get to her THIS way. Then he unbuckles his belt, a move which always clutches at her breath in her throat, but all he does is open his pants, pull himself out.

"My turn. On your knees," he says curtly. Oh yeah, this is gonna conquer her. She so hates going down on him. No..no…not that. She only rolls her eyes inwardly while she kneels up and reaches for him. And what the fuck? Bastard isn't even hard. Watching her like that, naked and pouring hot smut in his ears while she played with herself, while she very nearly came undone for him…and he's not even hard? She takes his cock in her hand, slides her mouth over him. In reality, she likes going down on him before he's all the way erect. It's a huge charge for her to suck him while he pants and gasps and groans for her, but when he isn't fully erect, she can get all of him in her mouth. She sucks him down until her lips are pressed to his groin, and she swallows, working him with her throat and tongue. He makes a small humming sound of approval. His fingers stroke through her hair. He's pretty damn helpless for her when he's like this. She sucks gently and feels him growing harder, starting to fill her mouth. Holds him like this until it starts to be too much of a strain, then backs off. She licks around the head, darts her tongue at the hole at the end of his cock, licks the underside, scrapes gently with her teeth. She's a little sorry it's over, because it was hot, but thinks it's better this way. She'll give all to him, someday, she's just not quite there yet. And this is the part of their sex life where he loses control himself, and either comes in her mouth or throws her down and fucks her blind once he can't take anymore.

But…what the fuck is he doing? He's TALKING to her. In a calm voice. Like she's not down here on her knees with his cock in her mouth, making him nuts for her.

"Can you see, Tasha?" he asks calmly. "I don't come undone for you when you use that fantastic mouth on me because I can't help it. I come undone for you because I'm able to let myself be completely open to you, completely vulnerable, and to give up control. I can have just as much self-control as you do if I choose to. How good do you feel about yourself right now, knowing you're doing something I love, while I'm standing here like it's nothing? Like it doesn't touch me?"

Oh god. She suddenly feels like he's hit her in the head with a board and then kicked her in the stomach. Her irritation and frustration and disbelief that he can stand there and be unaffected fly out the window as he drops this grand piano of a revelation on her head. She feels tears welling up in her eyes, and doesn't try to stop them. She pulls back, needs to tell him that she's sorry. The fingers drifting through her hair make a fist, and hold her head just where it is.

"You're not finished," he snarls, and he starts to fuck her mouth. He knows exactly how much she can take without him hurting her jaw or causing an oxygen issue, and he uses every last millimeter of that room. He uses her mouth roughly, something he would never have dreamed to do before, she knows. She wouldn't have let him. She lets him now, and finds to her immense surprise that she's getting off on letting him. She has no control over how fast or how deeply he fucks her mouth. He could break her jaw, or choke her, or suffocate her. He does none of these, but she feels the strength of his grip in her hair and the slide of his cock over her tongue and she whimpers. He may be using her like a two dollar whore, but in letting him, she feels how despite his rough treatment of her, he's taking great care to not go farther than she's able, and realizes that she TRUSTS him not to, and so she just stops *thinking* about sucking him off and enjoys it. He keeps talking, but it's different now.

"God, Tash…you're so fucking hot with my cock in your mouth like that. Have I ever told you I love watching you like this? You're the most gorgeous beast and if you didn't make me so damn hard I'll probably explode in a couple minutes, I could watch you all fucking day."

She moans a little, feels the head of his dick bump the back of her throat, tastes the salt of him on her tongue.

"When I come in your mouth, I'm going to lay you back down on the floor and use my tongue on you for just ages. I'm going to eat you like you're ice cream. I'm going to suck your sweet little swollen clit between my teeth and flick my tongue on it until you scream. I'm going to taste every bit of your sweet pussy and do you know what Tash?"

She makes an incoherent sound around his dick and he laughs a little.

"I'm not going to let you move while I do it, and I'm not going to let you come. Because if you move, I'm going to stop, and I'm going to punish you. And then I'm going to go down on you again. You won't come Tasha, not until I let you, and I won't let you. Not until you come unglued for me, Not until I've wrecked you. Not until you beg." As he finishes, she feels the rhythm of his strokes falter, feels his balls draw tight under her chin, and he comes, his body shuddering. His hand in her hair fists convulsively and he hisses through his teeth, and sighs, and pulls himself out of her mouth and refastens his pants. She swallows the hot salt of his pleasure, but feels a little bit bereft. He's usually so into it when he comes. He holds nothing back. It makes her feel like an asshole.

He pushes her back down on the floor on her back, orders her harshly to hold herself open for him. Her fingers shake a little when she does it. He drops to his knees between her legs and looks at her. She tries not to, but she's so damn hungry for him now that she can't help rolling her hips up towards him a little in invitation. He's just so fucking GOOD at eating pussy, she can't stand waiting for him to get on with it. He pulls his belt out of the loops and lays it on the floor beside her, a menacing black coil of leather, like a sleeping snake. She stares at it for a minutes, and jolts in surprise when his warm, wet mouth covers her pussy. His tongue glides long and slow up the whole length of her sex, between her fingers where she spreads herself for him. She sighs, then catches her breath when his tongue flickers over her clit. He only touches her there for a few seconds though, then continues to flick his tongue over all the slick rubbery flesh of her pussy. She groans, and tries very hard to be still. He suckles her clit gently, swirls his tongue AROUND it but not over it, nibbles and even bites a little, but he never stays with one pattern long enough or applies enough pressure to push her over the edge into orgasm. He pushes his fingers into her, spends several minutes finger fucking her deep and slow, avoiding her g-spot carefully. She's completely lost track of time. He pussy feels like a mindless starving thing that is going to eat her brain if it doesn't get what it wants. She whimpers and lifts her hips desperately towards his patient and ruthless mouth. He backs off, whispers harshly at her,

"This is your only warning, Tasha. Don't move again."

Fuck. Just…fuck. He's going to kill her. He'd better, or else she's going to kill *him*. A little teasing is fine but god, she needs to come. Needs it bad. Every square inch of her skin is buzzing. She pants and gasps and whimpers and she tries so fucking hard not to move but SHIT. His MOUTH. And she growls and presses her pussy up against his tongue and her hands reach for his hair. He sits up abruptly, leaving her bereft and whining for him wordlessly. He reaches for his belt. She doesn't care, do it, spank her, she deserves it, needs it. She starts to turn over and he stops her, sitting between her knees and forcing her legs open even wider. The belt snaps down hard on her inner thighs. She cries out in pain. Her skin is so soft there, so tender, and he's not gentle. Hot stinging pain erupts on her thighs as he spanks one side, then the other. When he stops, she's gasping and mewling and on the verge of tears, which isn't as long a trip for her as it should be, because he's opened her eyes to what an asshole she's been to him. But he stops. His sensitive fingers gently open her pussy, spread her wide, and the second her eyes fly open wide in realization, the very tip of the belt spanks her open pussy and she squeals in alarm and fear. Oh fuck, fuck, fuck…it bites, it burns and…god help her…it feels amazing. Dimly, she's aware he's being careful not to hit her there too hard, just enough to shock and sting. And shit, it does, but when she whimpers and cries out for him, it isn't only pain. She's confused, alarmed by her reaction. And feels utterly subjugated by his will. Yes, fuck, yes, spank her there, anything you want, just don't stop, you bastard, you fucker, she needs it, do it. God. He stops just this side of agony, leaving her trembling and shaken. There are tears rolling down her temples, wetting her hair. He leans back down, softly and tenderly kisses her hot burning pussy, licks and kisses the pain and sting away until she is once again consumed only by need. She clenches her fists and trembles against the need to move.

"Clint," she whispers urgently.

"Mm?" he asks inquiringly, but doesn't remove his mouth from her dripping pussy.

"I need to come," she says, and there's a whine in her voice. And right now she finds she just doesn't hate that like she would have a few hours ago.

"No," he says shortly, and goes back to his work. His fingers twist and press inside her, then slide slow and tormentingly between her cheeks to slide up her ass, while she shudders and groans. His wicked tongue laps sotly at her clit with no pattern or rhythm at all, just short then long then tiny faint touches then circles that surround her clit but don't touch it. The frustration becomes the driving force behind her entire existence. She can't control her body's vicious need for him.

Christ. She does. She needs him, like breathing. There's nothing protecting her anymore. He has not only exposed her, he has dragged that which he's exposed out into the street in broad daylight, and made her look. And she sees that what she's been protecting all this time is stupid. Because inside her, down deep where she hid it even from herself….It's him.

She breaks. She starts to cry in earnest, not tears of frustration but tears of release. Her body softens, muscles cease their desperate tremors. He senses it and his tongue swipes slow and sweet over her clit. She gasps for breath, and she cries for him.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she gasps. "Clint…oh god, forgive me. I'm…ah…I'm an idiot."

His honey sweet tongue glides over her again, just right, and she cries out, frantic.

"I..I…I…oh please!"

"Tell me, Tash," he whispers against her pussy.

"Hnnh…oh god…please…I need to come, oh please…please let me!"

Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ, his tongue.

"No Tasha…tell me."

"Fuck! Ah…I…oh…Clint! I…"

"Hm?"

"I…yield," she whispers, and the tears are hot on her face and she finds it doesn't hurt to say it at all, and his tongue flickers on her clit *just right* and her hands grasp desperately at the cheap carpet, and find no purchase, and then his hands slide into hers and she grips him like a life preserver and her orgasm crashes into her like breakers on a reef and she shatters. She screams and screams and screams, and she holds onto his hands so tight she feels their bones grinding together. Then suddenly, he is inside her, where he belongs, still holding her hands, and he moves in her like he's always been here, always part of her, and she cries while he rides out her orgasm and then pushes her up and up and up.

"Again," he gasps as he works deep inside her. "Go over again."

She hears him dimly through her own ragged cries, and she turns her face towards his, blinded, and she begs him,

"This time…come with me….please…"

His breathing hitches and falters and his hands in hers clench and she feels him shudder all over like a dog shedding water and he gasps.

"Always"

The man calling himself Yeltsin arrives at the bank at precisely 7:30 in the morning. He goes to his office and takes off his coat. Hanging it on a hook on his door, he goes and boots up his computer. He enters in a complicated series of characters, and the Bank of Minsk wallpaper screen vanishes, replaced by an entirely different one. He spends a few minutes, as he does every morning, checking on the progress of his newest pupil. Her instructors say she still resists them. He frowns, emails instructions, and resolves to pay her a visit himself tomorrow. He had hoped she would be farther along by now. She has such potential. Not unlike…ah, but that one is dead to him now. He makes it a policy never to think of her. He finishes, restores the computer to normal operations, and goes to open the vault before any of the other employees arrive for the day. He enters the code, swipes his identification, places his palm on the screen and waits for the green light. Then he spins the heavy old wheel and pulls the titanium door towards him. Another fake day, another ruble. He holds Yeltsin's life in contempt, and yet he plays the part flawlessly. There is very seldom such thing as an old spy. He intends to become one.

The irony of this thought being followed so closely by the alarming appearance of a silenced Sig Sauer pistol and a long recurve bow nocked with a menacing black steel and carbon arrow is certainly not lost on him. He looks at the pair who stand inside the vault, their weapons trained unwaveringly on him. The woman is lovely. She seems hardly to have aged a day since he saw her last. Always, before today, when those lovely blue eyes looked upon him, he was pleased to see fear and respect in equal measures. He sees neither now. Her eyes are cool. She gazes on him with contempt. Her partner, a rather alarming fellow with a sleeveless leather armored shirt, has a much more expressive gaze than does she. In his eyes. Rudchenko sees hot rage, a hatred so intense he feels compelled to step back from it lest he be consumed. He does not waste time with pleas, or attempt to distract them with conversation. He trained her. He knows this would be pointless.

"What do you want?" he asks. There is always a price. Everyone has one. He'll simply meet theirs.

"Just this," says the man softly.

They walk out of the bank casually, arm in arm, their backpacks slung casually over their shoulders. The disabled cameras will summon the police soon, but the tapes of them stepping over Ruchenko's body out of the vault, down the hall and into the security office are in Natasha's pocket. They head straight to the small private airstrip where they have left the helijet. By the time the police arrive to find the body of the man they believe to be Yeltsin, they are in the air and headed for home. They stop in France to refuel before continuing their trip. Sunset is approaching. Clint asks if she'd like to get a hotel and spend the night here, so that she doesn't have to fly in the dark. She looks at him and smiles.

"Let's go home," she says contentedly. "It looks plenty light to me."


End file.
